Taxi Driver Tantrums

5am wake up to set off to Hangzhou was miserable. The weather was glorious but I felt grim. The journey to the coach station seemed to take forever. I was happy to finally get my seat on the coach and I pretty much napped all the way. Tong Tong had phoned when we were nearly there to tell us that she had spoken to Miss Guo, (the manager of the company, and the lady whose home we stay in) and she had said we had to get a taxi to the company. What??? I was not happy about this, as we had no idea where the company was or how to even ask for the taxi to take us there. Tong Tong sent us a message with the address and phoned to say the reason why the company driver could not pick us up was because he was picking up their VIP client who had come from Paris. Hmmmm…

Getting a taxi was horrific; we had millions of people running over to us trying to get us into their illegal cabs we just hurried along to the taxi rank. We showed the first taxi man the message and he then signed for us to call someone so we put Tong Tong on the phone and gave it to the Taxi man. Next minute he was screaming down the phone and utter chaos broke out. He refused to take us and so did the next 20 taxi men. By this point we were trapped in a circle of about 15 people screaming and pointing us, my blood was at boiling point. I managed to get through to Vivienne at the company who speaks English and although she wasn’t working today she managed to help us get a taxi. She didn’t understand why the company had refused to pick us up and even when she tried speaking to the taxi men over the phone they were really rude and put the phone down several times.

Finally the security guard started screaming and literally snatched our bags and shoved us in a cab. Horror and panic was written all over my face and luckily the man listened to Vivienne over the phone where he took us to Jasmine who had met us on the main road where the company is situated. Once leaving he shouted at her too…what is wrong with this country? This was the first time I’ve actually experience people being hateful towards us and I found this quite shocking.

Upon entering our office the boss, Mr Chen asked if we were ok, and he too was very angry as to why his manager had not sent the company car. I think some wires were crossed along the way and after settling in to our work and making a cup of tea, we soon felt better. Today was quite a productive day and I worked on the print ideas for my theme of Russian Dolls. 

Tea Time in Hangzhou we somehow found ourselves in Pizza Hut again…the food situation is starting to kick in now and I just couldn’t face any more rice. 

Also we had good news about the bed situation, Tong Tong had told Miss Guo the beds were too hard so she had got some extra quilts out for us to lie on. Hallelujah, I had such a good sleep. In the office now starting designing the Summer Collection incorporating these prints and colours.

Tuesdays...a day in the life of a teacher!

Tuesday is pretty much a day in the life of a teacher for me. I have class all day from 8 – 5.  I had pattern cutting up till lunch and I’m not going to lie this is possibly the worst part of my day. It is interesting to see the students work but everyone is so shy including the tutors, no one wants to speak to me. The lesson is for 3 and a half hours and this drags. As many of the students are so busy they don’t want my help and don’t even want to try and learn English whilst working. I’d say about a quarter of the students like talking to me and I have been able to help them with their patterns, as I now have the same pattern book in English so I can understand what they show me. I have also been teaching these students the names of the equipment in English.

Angela my little friend in the class told me that today the tutors would be checking their work. This was very similar to our group crits in England so it was understandable to many students were too busy to chat, so I’m hoping in the next lesson I will be able to help and speak to more of the students. Their work seemed very dated and commercial and pretty much copied an image they had liked. It appeared that the class had been split into sections for example 1 set worked with chiffon and created floaty dresses and another worked with cotton and created cute day dresses. I also noticed that many of the outfits had been made in some crazy sizes. A pair of shorts literally dropped to the floor on one girl, unlike England where we work to an industry size 12. Another thing I noticed was that none of the garments had the correct fastenings for example there was no zips on trousers and no plackets, or buttons on shirts, I asked the students why and they said the tutor has said they don’t need to include them. I find this very strange, as I don’t understand how the tutor can mark the work unfinished without seeing if it fits properly or not. 11.30am the bell rang…finally lunch time.

After lunch I had a class on Luxury Brands, this week my tutor asked if I could go early as this week the students were photographing a model, which they had styled to look like a certain brand. The only brands that seem to have been chosen were Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, Versace, Burberry and Givenchy. This class seemed similar to our styling class from the first year, however their approach and their final outcome are incomparable to our class at Uni. Their awareness of the fashion industry and designers is very limited and for me this is quite shocking. Their work literally revolves around the above designers and they don’t seem keen to explore and further their own research on the Internet. It seems if their teacher doesn’t tell them about certain designers they will never know about them.

The students that had chosen to style a model in the style of Givenchy had chosen Audrey Hepburn for their inspiration forgetting what the actual current collections maybe. Lots of Tiara’s were involved to say the least. Becca and I teach the same class but to different students, today we worked together to try and help the students with poses and makeup. They all seemed very unprepared and had no idea of how their poses for their brand should be, for example Vivienne Westwood was trying to do pretty girly poses, and the students were directing this, Becca and I had to try and improvise and show them this was wrong, and used some magazines to help illustrate what we meant.  Some of the students were quite good and I was quite impressed with their androgynous take on Burberry.

Tuesday night was pizza hut night, in preparation for a grim few days of food in Hangzhou…

Sunday to Monday

On Sunday we were invited to our head tutor, Jasmine's house. We had a lovely afternoon, we visited Jasmine's local village market and when we got back we made dumplings for our dinner. We made what felt like thousands of dumplings and were expected to eat 20 according to Jasmine. They were tasty but a little repetitive as this was all we were eating. This seems to be quite a traditional thing in China you just eat one type of food, where as in England there are many contrasting flavours so you don't get bored.

We were still starving when we got home and Jeremy, our friend, dropped by with some mucas cough syrup from Australia to help clear my chesty cough. Despite Jasmine giving me various medications for it I'd rather have something where I can actually see the instructions or know at least what it is. He was an absolute star and brought us pizza from pizza hut too.

Monday morning 6.15 wake up call was horrendous to say the least all because Kate and I were modelling some horrific hats. The good news came from the photographer saying we would be done within the hour. £40 for 1 hours work, tremendous, thats our break in Shanghai paid for. By 9am we were home so I was able to prepare for my 2 english classes that afternoon, and even had time to squeeze in an episode of The Only Way Is Essex.

For my first class, we had arrange to discuss various foods and had got the students to prepare a presentation of their favourite food which they could discuss in English. The class was quite a success but I do feel they are rather shy when wanting to speak in English. This became more apparent after my second class of the afternoon.

On Friday, Jasmine said another department had asked if anyone would be willing to teach their Animation Design students. It appeared I had free time, despite having tons of work to do for placement. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the class but in the end we had a right laugh. The students were slightly younger than my first class, aged 18-20 but far more confident. I got everyone to come up to the front of the class and their English was quite good. Gave a few people English names which was funny and I felt really at ease teaching them. Whereas in my previous class its slightly like getting blood from a stone. Towards the end of the class the Animation Tutor and another man (later found out he was a Swimming Tutor) joined the class just in time for me to ask the student if they had anything they wanted to ask me. First question "do you have a boyfriend?" always get asked without fail. For some reason the Swimming Tutor mustn't have been listening then he came up and asked if I was married or single, what? Really he's supposed to be professional...the class was in uproar saying stuff in Chinese I think they were telling him to ask me out but thankfully he was shy and ran to the back of the class to his seat.
One of my students had a pet Squirrel which I found very strange, is he waiting to eat it ? It might not even be a Squirrel...who knows, cute though.

Saturday Snaps