Easter Sunday in China

Today we had our first english class this was a private class so was only with 4 students. They ranged from the ages of 6-10, 2 boys and 2 girls. I think they were equally as daunted as us if not more. We taught them some basics to see what level they were up to and then chose animals as our topic area. The older children were better but they all knew how to speak english but were just very shy. One girl just whispered but as the class progressed she got louder.

It was quite difficult to teach the class with the parents there. At times they got involved and spoke to their children in chinese. I don't think this is beneficial and one girl called Casey even had a tear running down her face at one point when her Dad was speaking to her. I found this hard just wanted to give her a hug. We asked Jasmine, the lady who is in charge of us if the parents will often sit in and she said they will because they travel so far. I do think this stunts their learning as they are shy in front of us anyway and are scared of embarrassing their parents. From what we have learnt the chinese are scared of making mistakes, unlike England we see making mistakes as a way of learning for the future, they think of it as very negative. I hope that we might be able to teach some classes separately and this might encourage them to speak up.

After class I went back to our dormitory to have a break and catch up on missed blogs. This was a nice relaxing time as we have been so busy here. Tong-Tong invited us out for tea with her husband, Peter (this is his English name) and a friend from their English School, Lucy (English Name). Lucy is chinese has a degree in English and teaches at the University and also at Tong-Tongs English classes. We went to a restaurant near Ningbo market, I think it was a Korean restaurant as I ordered a Korean style pizza this was not the nicest, but it was lovely to be taken out for tea and we really appreciated the experience and was able to sample many different chinese cups of tea.

Talking to Lucy was incredible, she speaks impeccable english and was able to give us more of an insight into the chinese culture and their traditions. She was equally interested in hearing about our culture in England. Overall I think there are many similarities between China and England in the sense of the pension system and they have mortgages so they can buy apartments. However in England our pensions are quite poor yet in China they get 1.5 times more their yearly wage for their pension. The rule in England is no smoking inside this is true for China as well. However in China the policemen don't enforce the law because they see the people who would get prosecuted as their friends, and they themselves will most likely smoke inside.

The law that has baffled me the most is the 1 baby rule, I knew this was true at one point but I thought this had now stopped, how wrong was I? Tong-Tong is wanting to have a baby and she is only allowed to have 1 baby. This is because she has a brother. Only if both parents are only children they can have 2 babies (if you have twins this is ok), this is because there are less people to look after their grandparents, and the chinese believe it is very important to support and look after the elderly. Its sad to say that in England in general I think we are overall disrespectful to the elderly and things like this I think as a nation we should be more caring. If you have 2 children but your only allowed 1 you get fined 10 times your yearly salary which is absurd. Roughly 36% of China's population is subject to the this 1-child rule. It was introduced in the 1978 as a way of reducing the ever growing population of China, for the chinese citizens this is very sad and I could not even imagine how hard it would be to not have that freedom. We explained to them that in England families with more children get more money in forms of benefits, they found this very alien and I don't think they could come to terms with the concept, which is understandable. We touched on the censoring situation in China and we said how we feel we still are very controlled in our country however this is hidden from us unlike in China they know what they can't see and what they can't speak. Freedom is what they lack. Overall I think both China and England would benefit from adopting some of each others traditions.

In the next few weeks both Lucy and Tong-Tong have invited us to go to their homes to witness their customs and traditions as we don't get to see this first hand in our very hotel like flat.