Tough Duty

Some days as a teacher are harder to take than others. Today was one of the good days. I pulled an extra duty supervising a field trip for our newly formed golf team. The field trip was to Pine Valley where there is a brand new Jack Nicklaus designed 18 and which is also hosting the new Beijing Open. The kids went to see Jack Nicklaus who was there to open the new course and promote the new tournament and also to give a clinic to the juniors. So our school answered the call and found 12 student golfers or would-be golfers and 6 staff members who volunteered to chaperone. Notice the student staff ratio! Most of the faculty were living their childhood fantasies of meeting the Great Man, Golfer of the Century, the Golden Bear himself!

Jack gave about an hour clinic for the juniors and then signed autographs for about a half hour. I am sure he has done it few times before but it felt special for me. I felt really honoured to be that close to Jack Nicklaus. The focus was on the kids and Jack kept it there; he gave simple, sensible concepts about the golf swing and the game. He is a real class act – quiet, a bit self-deprecating and he can still hit a ball. There were less than a hundred juniors out so we got quite close to him and I got lots of opportunity to take photos.

John Daley was also there for the tournament along with the rest of the field hitting balls. John didn't play well last year so he doesn't have full playing rights on the PGA Tour. He has been playing on the Asian Tour the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I only got to see him chipping but it was still fun to see. Daley didn't practice for long - last week he shot 79 - 76 and didn't make the cut. John hits chips for about 10 minutes and them wandered off - probably for asmke. He has never been known as a big advocate of practice.

So that's the story - it was about an hour bus ride each way, but we were back to school about 1:00 in time for afternoon classes sporting our new golf shirts and hats. The guy in the picture with me is Fred Savoy whom I have been playing golf with most weekends. I also won 2 weekly passes for the golf tournament - I can only use them Sunday as I a playing Saturday, but I will loan them to anyone else who wants to go. The contest involved writing a favourite memory about golf. This is the link - you might enjoy reading the story!
http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/events/6340/

Update: Gaurav Ghei, an Indian golfer, won the event. Bill Crabbe and I got out on Sunday to watch the finish. We followed John Daly for about 5 holes and were amazed by his drives. He was hitting it about 50 yards past the other golfers and close to 100 past the eventual winner. He was 5 under when we picked him up, but by the finish he was only 2 under. He hit a marvelous drive on the last hole - about 370 yards into a narrow neck of land with water on one side and deep rough on the other. Then he hit his pitch just short into greenside rough, fluffed the pitch out, chipped his fourth to within 4 feet and missed the putt - double bogey. By contrast Ghei whom we followed for the last 4 holes was hitting the ball about 260 off the tee but every shot was perfectly played. He cautiously manouevered his way home and won by about 2 shots. Pine Valley also looks like a great course.

Nobody Home at Chairman Mao’s

As we get closer to going home we are trying to make sure we see as much of Beijing as possible. Two weekends ago we met Don & Eve and visited the Dirt Market. The Dirt Market is renown for selling antiques and collectibles and just plain junk – kind of like a giant flea market where you can also buy a 5-ton sculpture for your garden. I am not sure why it is called the Dirt Market – maybe because a lot of the wares are displayed on the ground. Anyway, it is one of the must-visit markets in Beijing and all of the inveterate shoppers on our staff had already been. We resisted the temptation of going because by the time we got around to it, it was already cold and we planned to wait until it warmed up. Anyway the day we picked was a gloriously sunny warm spring day with highs around 20 degrees. So we have now filled that hole in our Beijing shopping experience. The treasures we came home with include a piece of pottery and a painting – both good “deals”!

Today, we went off to see Chairman Mao, who lies in state in a mausoleum on Tiananmen Square. We met Don & Eve bright and early only to discover that the mausoleum was closed for repair until September. So we will be leaving Beijing without visiting Mao! We improvised the morning by taking Don and Eve to see Liulichang, an antique street south of Tiananmen where we had bought some paintings. We poked around in the hutong there and stopped for a wonderful brunch at a backpackers hostel. Afterwards we took a cab up to the north gate of the Forbidden City to visit the gardens and take a picture of the infamous Starbucks within the Forbidden City – one of the ‘features’ of Chinese tourist attractions is that there are often restaurants and souvenir shops within the gates. Many Chinese feel that the Starbucks in the Forbidden City cheapens the place and they may be right. Then we walked over towards the Wangfujing shopping area in order to find the famous night market, which is a long row of food stalls selling deep-fried scorpion and other exotic snacks. We decided that this would be our next Friday night dinner spot. I wonder if we will have to go somewhere to eat, after we eat? We continued to poke around Wangfujing, spending quite a while in the foreign language bookstore there, then cabbed home about 3 PM.

One of the frustrating things about shopping in the markets in Beijing is that it is hard to tell what the actual value of anything is. Prices are rarely marked on anything and if you ask the price, the vendor will give you whatever price sounds good to him. The asking price is often 10 times or more the actual selling price. As obvious foreigners, of course, we are all fabulously wealthy and it is well known that we throw money around like fools! We were quick to catch on to this thinking, but it still is hard to bargain if you don’t know the real price. If someone is asking 400, it feels wrong to offer him 40; but often this is what you have to do. Some vendors will tell you that the real price is 500, but that since you are their newfound friend, they will only ask 460. This for the same item that should sell for 40! Another strategy is that the vendor will offer you the ubiquitous calculator and ask you to punch in your price. You must realize that if you punch in a number, this is considered an offer and only a real idiot would not realize this. One strategy is to punch in what you feel the price should be and stick to it. This can be difficult to do in the face of cries of “You’re killing me!” from the vendors. My tactic at this point is to just walk away, if you are not getting the right price. Usually there is the same merchandise for sale within 10 meters and often the price will drop dramatically as you get a few feet away. Some vendors will attempt to call you back with a lower price, chase you or physically restrain you. This can be quite a sight – imagine a 90-pound girl trying to hold back a 200-pound man! Because of all this, price shopping as we know it is pretty hard to do. Thus there is much trading of information among our staff. When someone shows up with something new, the first question is, “How much did you pay?” followed by, “Where did you get it?” So we are getting better at bargaining and knowing the real price, but sometimes you just want to buy something and not spend ten minutes haggling.

So shopping can chew up a lot of time in China. Another factor is that there is really no such thing as the Superstore. For instance, to do our weekly grocery shopping, we typically go to 4 or 5 different shops. We go to 2 or 3 different grocery stores each of which offers some but not all of the ‘exotic’ western foods we like. We go to a fruit and vegetable market where we get the best prices on produce. We go to another German specialty store where we buy cheese and meat. And finally, we go to a bakery where we buy all our bread – good bread and baked goods are quite difficult to find. Oh yeah, and there is also another place where we buy our water – you can’t drink the tap water here at all. On top of this, we are usually walking at least one way and taxiing back. Also because we have a smallish refrigerator, we must go shopping every few days. So there is nothing efficient about shopping in China and sometimes I think it will be great just to see the old Superstore again.

Field Trips

April 18, 2007

Spring is here and it is the time for field trips. I took the Grade 9 and 10 classes out for a field trip to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and Beihai Park. The purpose of the field trip was to give the students a chance to document their city for a photo essay they are doing. The day turned out to be a wonderful spring day with blue skies (miracle!) and highs around 18 Centigrade. We set off with 33 students and 4 supervisors. After surviving traffic jams and being ticketed for driving by the square without the proper permit, we strolled though Tiananmen and into the Forbidden City. We spent about 2 hours touring the Forbidden City. You’ll be pleased to know that Asian students are the same as kids anywhere and some appreciated the iced coffee from Starbucks at the north end of the Forbidden City more than the historic scenery. Anyway, we congregated at the north gate and drove the short distance to Beihai Park where we ate our packed lunches. We let the students wander through the park, visit the beautiful pagoda and hopefully get some great pictures. We were back to the school and downloading our pictures by 3:00. 33 students out, 33 students back in. Successful field trip in my view!

This past weekend, March 14th was an adult field trip. We hit the airport for a 5:30 flight to Shenzhen Friday night where we met our friends, Don and Eve. We were visiting with our friends at our sister school n Shenzhen by 10:00 PM. The weather in there was a beautiful 25 degrees. We had a short tour of the neighborhood and visited with our colleagues who were having a sing-along on their balcony. We found the staff accommodations there quite different; they consist of a dorm-style room with ensuite bathroom and minimal cooking facilities. Couples have two adjoining rooms of the same type. The nice thing is that the weather is so warm that the open-air hallways and courtyards become lounges and extended living space. The campus itself is older than CIS and more in the style of Concord college except that this campus is right in the city. It is a short cab ride down to an area called Shicot down on the waterfront, which has a lot of western restaurants and shops and other services.

Saturday morning Don and I hit the golf course. We had hoped to play the famous Mission Hills, but our plans fell through. We were fortunate that Jill, the principal of the international school, arranged a starting time for us as guests of the parent. The course we played was very near the airport and was really quite nice with lush fairways, lots of water and sand. I managed to break 90 for the first time in China, so I was happy. Our host, a Korean lady, was quite charming and peppered us with questions about English. After the round, she treated us to lunch and arranged for our discounted green fees. Saturday evening we went to dinner with two Shenzhen teachers and their Chinese partners. It was a Brazilian barbeque-style restaurant, so all our meat cravings were sated. Sunday morning we arose late, had a leisurely brunch in a French wine bar, did a little shopping and then hit the airport again for the flight home. It sounds quite rushed but actually it was quite relaxing and really got our minds off schoolwork.

Back to the Wall

On March 24th and 25th we took a trip with the Chinese Culture Club to the nearby city of Tangshan and the Great Wall at Qing Shang Guan. We left Saturday morning to travel by bus to Tangshan, a trip of 2 ½ to 3 hours. Within 30 minutes of Beijing we were hung up in traffic by the first of several traffic accidents that were to bedevil us all weekend. We were on the throughway and they closed the tollgate in front of us while they cleaned up the mess. Tangshan is notable for two things – it is a centre of china and ceramic production and it is remembered for a huge earthquake in 1976 in which 200,000 people were killed. Because of the delay our visit to Tangshan consisted mainly of an elaborate lunch and then a visit to a china factory. Watching the china being made was interesting, but there was nothing tempting to buy, so before long we were back on the bus heading to the Great Wall.

As we headed to Qing Shang Guan, we noticed that the towns we passed through were very poor. There were a lot of factories and mines and the area seemed to be extremely dusty, dirty and impoverished. Amongst all the industry along the road, there was also intensive cultivation of the land. The road seemed to get poorer and narrower and less crowded and we began to get quite concerned about where we were going to stay. We arrived at our destination around 6 PM, disembarked from the bus and were told to climb the path to the ‘resort’. The entire village had turned out to see us arriving including many mothers and grandmothers with babes in arm, an old man in a wheelchair, a woman on crutches and a man with a broken arm. When we finally arrived, we found the resort quite unique and charming. It was a restored ‘castle’ – really a walled village nestled into one side of the Ming Great Wall. This part of the wall was built later than other parts to defend against the Japanese. Our ‘room’ was a traditional courtyard house and directly behind the house was the wall with a guard tower looming above the house!

After poking around the village, which was lovingly restored, we met for dinner. Because it was early in the season, the resort restaurant was not operating and we were invited to have dinner at a local villagers home. This turned out to be a small two family house with one main room for each family. The room was divided into a sleeping platform and a large dining table. The room was complete with the family TV and family pictures and knickknacks. The food consisted of ‘local specialties’, which were quite a bit different from Beijing food. There were lots of dishes, perhaps 25 for our table of 8 – far more than we could eat. There was lots of tofu, fish, pickled vegetables, chicken etc. – interesting but not exactly our comfort food. The hit of the evening was two blonde, blue-eyed French-Canadian boys aged 2 and 4. As we ate dinner, about a dozen people stood outside and watched the boys play on the sleeping platform. Blondes are very rare in China and everyone wanted to touch them – touching babies is considered to be good luck. We were well up in the mountains and the air was very clear; after dinner we were amazed to see the stars and moon in the night sky. The night was cold, but our beds were cozy with integrated heating pads and big comforters.

The next morning we had an early breakfast and then turned out to climb a section of the wall in glorious spring sunshine. This part of the wall ascended a mountain and because it was unrestored it was very rough and overgrown in spots. We shared part of it with a flock of goats and their droppings! Along the side of the wall as it snaked up the mountain, farmers were cultivating their narrow terraced garden plots. The last part of the climb was quite strenuous and Brenda decided to pass on it, but I persevered and made it to the top. After the hike, we had lunch again in the village and then headed out of town. Less than 5 minutes into our trip we ran into another accident – this time a brand new Lexus had totaled a motorcycle – no sign of the motorcyclist but he must have been hurt. After getting by that we ran into another accident in which a beer truck (yes) had turned over and blocked the route to the expressway. By the time we got around that we arrived in Beijing about 2 hours late. A fun trip but lots of time on the bus!

So that was last weekend. Since then it has been mostly school. We are certainly looking forward to it being over and getting back home. Last weekend I played golf and Brenda toured three museums with a group from the school. I have yet to break 90 in China and this past Saturday turned out to be another challenging day weather wise with ridiculously high winds. So there was an excuse for my poor play – except that the guy who won the tournament shot 76! He must be a player. I have bought two new putters – a Ping Crazee and a Yes Callie. Both are either real or very good copies, but they cost me around $30 – over $200 at home. I am testing them out and so far prefer the Ping. Did I tell you we have a putting green on campus?