Strange things about China

It seems that winter might finally be on the way. I'm wearing a polo-neck for the first time in a long time and am contemplating putting the other duvet on the bed [we got a new one and it has two parts that you can fix together]. Anyway, it's not bad for the third week in October, I suppose.

So, the new first years (or 'freshmen' as they like to call them here) have been with us for over a month and a half now. Given that their first two weeks were taken up in military training, we could call it roughly a month that they've been 'loose' on campus. Enough time you would have thought [or I would've thought] for them to get used to the sight of foreigners on campus, right? No. Sadly not. I'm sure they got over it much quicker last year, but Rick swears that it went on for the whole year. So we're still being subjected on a daily basis to what I can only describe as 'weirdness'. People suddenly starting to speak English when we're near them. Now, they're not speaking to us - oh no, they're just spouting all the English phrases they know. People shouting 'hallloooo! to us from a distance' - they're not being friendly and they're certainly not trying to communicate with us. It's just some kind of reflex reaction [see a foreigner, 'say hello'] and, I have to say, weird.

Today after class I was checking some students' work and students from the next class started coming into the classroom. Suddenly, I was aware of a few 'hallloooooooo's and 'nice to meet you's from the back of the class. Not normal.

I was reading some comments about this whole thing on someone else's blog. Someone commented that when working in Shanghai she just put such behaviour into a box labelled 'strange things about China' and forgot about it. I reckon it's probably the best (and only) way to deal with it without (a) going mad; or (b) thumping someone!!!

Anyway, the whole point of this is to say that today my faith was somewhat restored. I was walking to class when I student I didn't know started talking to me. She spoke to me in a perfectly normal way and we had a good chat. Phew! There's hope yet...

PS - this week I have mostly been getting my students to write stories about aliens. Some great stories!