Summer school is over and I’m sitting on a plane to Europe.
The journey is extremely long and especially the last leg, very tiresome. The
journey is just like the summer that has come to an end. Three months in the
hot hell of Shanghai. What was it like? To sum up: a great experience with ups and downs.
It was my second time at SISU on the Hull University summer
programme. Hull University, the place where I once studied and later worked
over a few summers, started in 2016 a collaboration with SISU (Shanghai
International Studies University). Here we teach IELTS and prepare the students
to enter Hull University in autumn. It’s the same programme like in Hull. When
the programme started in 2016, it was only three of us and many Chinese
colleagues working on the programme. It started with Andrew, our programme
leader and Howard, the man in charge and I joined later when Andrew had to
return to Hull. So basically, it was only two Europeans standing like lampposts
or lighthouses against the storm.
This year it was four of us. Howard, Alistair, Leslaw and
me. And Andrew came on a short visit to assist in the midterm exams and do some
other business.
The beginning of the summer, even though only three months
back, seems and feels like ages ago. It feels as if we have come a long way,
which we have indeed. I was looking forward to this summer for various reasons.
First of all, returning to a place is always nice. Secondly, having a gym and
sports facilities directly opposite is fantastic, thirdly, seeing people you
haven’t seen for years is a happy event.
I posted about my arrival sometime in early June. The start
into the summer wasn’t as I had expected it. After a nearly 20 hours long
journey I arrived at the SISU Guesthouse only to find out that no room had been
booked for me. After a few messages and calls, I was told that a Chinese
teacher was asked to book a room for me and he booked one in the SISU Hotel. No
idea why he did it, but I later found out that the hotel is considered to be of
higher class. I, and many more, strongly disagree. The building might be conveniently
located directly opposite Chi Feng Lu station, but it’s at the corner of two
very busy roads and is therefore very loud. The rooms are small, the building
is dodgy, run down and filthy and there’s no air con. An A/C is essential in
the hot hell of Shanghai. There’s also a frustrating, depressing and
melancholic atmosphere in the building that makes you feel down and weird. The
breakfast room is big and communist chic, and the selection is poor. At least
there’s toast bread, butter and marmalade for us Westerners.
I spent one night there and moved to the much better
Guesthouse. I got a room on the 16th floor facing Chi Feng Lu
station and part of the campus and the Xianda College. Directly underneath
flows a small river and next to it is a big road. It’s a bit noisy during the
day, but not as noisy as in the Hotel, and it’s very quiet at night, partially
because of less traffic and partially because of the closure of half the road.
I stayed the entire June in this room and moved for the
remaining two months to another room directly opposite, from where I had a
great view over the Pudong Skyline, Shenhua Football Stadium, Luxun Park and
part of SISU campus. It’s quieter on this side of the building because the road
is farther away, but you hear the trains every few minutes from 6am to almost
midnight.
There were two meetings scheduled on the first day. An
informal one for us foreign teachers in the Bella Café on campus and later an
official meeting where Howard held a presentation in front of the staff and
told us what we were expected to do. Then we had the chance to get to know each
other and exchange WeChat contacts.
My first weekend in Shanghai was spent in complete isolation
with long walks around Shanghai. Howard decided to get a flat this summer
instead of living in the guesthouse and Alistair lives in Shanghai with his
girlfriend. Both of them live some 45 minutes away from campus. Leslaw was due
to arrive two weeks later.
Since the weather was pleasant, I took the opportunity to
walk around for hours and hours. The first two weeks were also spent in
isolation and the old Therapy? Song ‘isolation’ came to my mind and became my
companion. Also, a sentence from an essay of one of my students in Guiyang came
to mind: sometimes, I enjoy my moments of solitude. Miss Zhang Pan Wei, I
totally agree with you. I really enjoy it. I teach my classes, pay the
photocopy room extensive visits and go home to prepare lessons and work on
translations. The weather gets worse unfortunately, it gets colder and wetter
and is not suitable for walks. I make use of the rain breaks to walk around a
bit and start going to the gym and jog on the track early in the morning like
the Chinese. The 400m track gets busy as soon as the University gates open at
6am, and gets quieter between 8 and 9am. The last athletes leave around 9. The
same happens in the nearby Luxun Park. People gather in the park for all sorts
of activities, be it jogging, walking backwards and forward, playing feather
ball, doing yoga and tai-chi and many other things. I too started doing
tai-chi, but didn’t really succeed. I couldn’t do most of the moves and balancing
on one leg without moving took me a long time to master. I fell down a few
times, which made the Chinese shake their heads and give me some funny,
disapproving looks. The Chinese are masters in tai-chi and exceptionally agile.
I just made a fool of myself, but I didn’t really mind. I wanted to learn and
to exercise and get fit. I got extremely fit over this summer and completed
several half-marathons on the treadmill or the track. I took me over a month to
run 21km and my record is 32km. My goal is to run a marathon in the near
future, if possible the real one in Greece.
The first two weeks passed pleasantly and quickly. I got to
know my students and found out their levels and needs and we started bonding.
Then Leslaw arrived.
We got to know each other four years ago in Hull and
happened to share a house with four other tutors. We had email contact over all
those years and it made me happy to hear that he got accepted to join our team.
Leslaw is Polish and one of the kindest people I have ever met. According to
our student Tongtong, also known as Tracy, he delivers high-end lessons. To our
fortune the weather was good when he arrived and we went on long walks. But
then we socialised less, because both of us were extremely busy. Bumping into
him and going for lunch or dinner was always a delight. We did the speaking
exam together and he helped me with marking essay papers, when I got confused
with assigning marks.
Then came Jerry, or Gerasimos as he real name is.
My friend Jerry came from Guiyang on a short visit before he
left for Europe and everything changed. The quietness, isolation and solitude
were gone. We met two language students from the Ukraine and Poland, Hannah and
Natalia, who speak Chinese, but came on an exchange programme to improve their
knowledge. Their programme was totally different from other language courses.
They had tai-chi lessons, went on excursions to factories and local families
and visited some nearby places. Their programme was packed, full of propaganda,
but they enjoyed it.
We exchanged WeChat contacts and went out clubbing. I had
the contact of a promoter and on one of our nights out we met a second
promoter. As I was a bit busy, Jerry spent more time with the ladies. We met
more people, like the German Felix who was on the same programme as the ladies
and the group grew bigger. Jerry stayed a little longer than expected, due to
bad weather. He was to fly from Shanghai to Guangdong and continue his journey
from there, but Guangdong was flooded and his flight got cancelled. He changed
his flight and flew from Shanghai to Europe.
I continued partying with the ladies, Felix and the others
and got to know a number of local night clubs. End of July everybody left and
it was quiet for a week before new language students arrived, but I didn’t
bother getting to know any.
Then Andrew arrived.
Our programme leader Andrew came in July for ten days to
assist us in the midterm exams and do some other business and we used the
occasion to go out for dinners and walks. One night we walked for about an hour
to an Indian restaurant and then about an hour back. We had some great
discussions that evening, but walking in the heat was a pain. Andrew showed us
a great local food place next to Chi Feng Lu station, where we had dinner once
and enjoyed local cuisine and were treated very friendly. We also paid the fake
market an extensive visit.
Then Mi arrived.
Readers of my blog, especially the Hong Kong, Macau and
Shanghai story, will know who I am talking about. I hadn’t seen Mi, whose name
means ‘sweet life’ for a year and it was a pleasant surprise to hear that she
wanted to come on a short visit. We went for a walk around the area and I took
her to a business lunch, where she met my colleagues and some of the admin
staff. Her visit was too short, but I enjoyed every single moment.
Then Allan arrived.
Allan came to Shanghai to work at the photography exhibition
for a few days and I used the opportunity to see him and the exhibition. Allan
is Chinese and we met in Guiyang. I hadn’t seen him for about a year and it was
great seeing him again. I posted about him and the exhibition a while ago.
Then Alistair left us and Ian arrived.
Alistair, whose lessons Tongtong describes as ‘freestyle’,
had some visa issues and had to leave us. Such a pity to see a great colleague
leave! Ian from Hull University replaced him. I knew Ian, but hadn’t seen him
for four years, so it was great to see him again. His wife joined a few days
later and since it was their first time in Shanghai, they went around town for
shopping and sightseeing. It wasn’t that hot and humid anymore, but going out
was still a pain.
For some reason, I didn’t suffer from the heat that much
this year. Could be that I was fitter than last year and was more resilient to
the weather conditions. I even walked home from the Bund after a night out,
because I didn’t have money for a taxi. I was dead tired when I arrived home in
the early morning, after over an hour of walking in the heat.
The resilience to the heat could be due to a low heartbeat
athletes usually have. The Chinese don’t seem to suffer from the heat and the
humidity and most of them are quite fit and active.
I also enjoyed weekly massage treatments at a nearby parlour,
which is run by blind people. I usually went for a two-hour treatment. One hour
foot massage, followed by one hour full-body massage. Sometimes I had a
two-hour full body massage. I discovered the place last summer and became a fan.
I am the only foreign customer there and the people seem happy when I go there.
Because the massage is hard, you feel sore after it and it takes a day for the
pain to go away. But you feel better once the pain has gone. I tried to go
there every five or six days and fell into a deep sleep while the masseur was kneading
my feet and body. Sometimes the masseurs kneaded extra hard and laughed when I
screamed of pain. They must have thought, that Europeans are weak.
That’s one of the things I was looking forward to and one of
the things I miss now.
Our students were great. We had 57 students divided into
three groups. Groups 1 and 2 were quiet and 3 was lively. Each group had a
leader assigned and was the spokesperson and the person in charge for their
group. They were the contact people between the students, the teachers and the
administration. That’s why Tongtong was asked to hold a speech at the opening
ceremony. Initially I didn’t want to go to the opening ceremony, because I had
some bad experiences in the past, especially in Ar’ar, where I suffered and was
begging for the moment for the ceremony to end and be able to go out. But the
students of group 3, Tongtong above all, persuaded me to attend. I obeyed and
liked it. My dear Tongtong, now it’s the time to tell you, I had a hard time to
understand you, but got the general meaning. I am happy to see the great
progress you have made over the summer. Your level of English has gone up big
time and I and my colleagues feel rewarded.
Tongtong, which in English means Childhood-Childhood, proved
to be an angel. She was sitting right in front of the teacher’s desk and was in
charge of the presences book and in charge of everything. I asked the group if
they had a WeChat group and if they could put me in. Tongtong had to befriend
me in order to make me a group member, and got mad when I blocked my moments
and wouldn’t speak to me for a few days. Moments are the equivalent to the wall
on Facebook and you can block them for individual people, so they can’t see
what you post. However, some (or all) of the students in the chat group could
see my moments, not sure what they could see, but Tongtong couldn’t and therefore
got mad and sad. I decided to unblock her and made her happy. She became my
angel and helped me with many things. Whenever I needed help, Tongtong was
there. Whenever I wanted to order something from Taobao, the Chinese version of
our eBay, she did it for me, I sent her the money over WeChat, she ordered,
received and brought it to me.
Unlike many Chinese people who are usually shy and
introvert, Tongtong is very outgoing and not shy at all. She’s doing it right,
she’s not afraid of making mistakes and just speaks and expresses herself,
which can lead to some funny moments, because sometimes nobody understands her
and she gets stuck and confused and starts giggling.
She has great leadership skills and I am sure that she’ll
have a great career in a leading position. I call her ‘boss’ and admire her
leadership skills.
She also organised the farewell party, which was a great
success. I wrote about it in my last post. It was a weird evening with mixed
feelings. I didn’t know what to feel. Should I be happy or sad? When Tongtong
and I hugged each other goodbye, we both were close to tears.
I would like to thank all our students (I mentioned a few in
earlier posts) for a fantastic summer and hope to hear from you again. I hope
you have a great start in Hull and achieve your goals.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have a closing ceremony this
summer, which means that there was no proper opportunity to say goodbye. The
last time we saw some of our students was on the very last exam day and very
few came to collect their results on our final working day.
The following morning, Leslaw, Ian’s wife and I shared a
taxi to the airport and hugged goodbye before departure. Who know when and
where we will meet again. Howard was flying a bit later than us and we didn’t
meet at the airport. Ian left two days after us.
I am sitting next to the German Au-Pair girl Anna on the
first leg from Shanghai to Moscow and the nine and a half hours flight passes
pleasantly and quickly. We have some nice conversations and I help her carry
her heavy hand luggage to her gate.
The second leg, four hours to Athens, is a pain. The plane
is always fully booked and the seats are uncomfortable for tall people like me.
When I arrive in Athens late at night and wait at the belts
for my luggage, I wait for nothing, because my luggage remained in Moscow. I
had the feeling that my luggage wouldn’t make it, because there was a gate
change in Moscow and I saw great confusion with the luggage people. I’m told
that it would arrive the following morning and get delivered in the afternoon.
It’s almost midnight when I step out in the warm Athenian
night. Although dead tired, I feel that I am ready for the next adventure. Or
has it already begun?
Tongtong, the boss and my angel this summer.
Howard, according to group 3 students (very cool)
Me, according to group 3 students
Therapy? Isolation (video opens in a new window)
P.S. While you are reading this, I'm on a motorcycle tour across Europe.
If you would like to read more by me, find the following two on Amazon by typing in the name Theodore Goumas
