It wasn't without reluctance that I started packing for the move to the hotel. Xiao's family have taken very good care of me whilst living in Hua Xiang district, they seem to accept my inordinately late nights and later mornings, they have fed me and made certain that my Chinese isn't totally awful. Furthermore, I seemed to have accumulated far more luggage than I'd actually brought with me to Shenyang. Xiao's entire extended family appear to live in constant dread of my feeling the cold; so far I have been the humble recipient of five splendid warm coats, for fear of my being caught without one on a particularly frosty morning.

My first impression of Lan Ting was that it was more of a student hostel than a hotel, an impression which has lasted. We took the elevator up to the third floor from the fabulous foyer, which was complete with chandelier, sculptures, a bar and attractive desk attendants. Behind them on the wall was a sign which read 'Lan Ting: Certified as suitable for the putting up of foreigners'. I wondered whether the initial composition of the sentence contained a since-edited 'with'.

The lift doors opened into a grubby brown corridor with thinning carpets and stacked mattresses against the far wall. A few Americans were drifting in the hall; most of the foreign teachers stay on this floor. The room itself was even more reminiscent of student accommodation, an old office desk had been shifted against the wall, and the wiring for the power sockets on the opposite side of the room lay exposed behind a contraption between a pair of single beds which served to operate these, the main lights and the bedlamps. It was apparently designed so that the television could be turned off whilst in bed; in fact, it meant that you really had to get into bed before turning on any of the lights. I was left to unpack and make the room look pleasant, instead, I decided to take advantage of the unlimited hot water and enjoy a long shower.

There was a fixture for hanging the shower head (which was typically at the end of a tube extending from the bath taps) above your body so that you could stand in the bath whilst letting the warm water run down your shoulders. I hesitated before getting in, however, opting to let the rust in the water run through the tubes until the water was moderately clear. I'm glad about this, as within moments the fixture shuddered out sending the shower rose tumbling - I had at least avoided some injury. The water didn't seem to want to go down the plug hole, either: closer examination revealed that it was clogged by the previous occupant's hair. It was beautiful hair, too - thick, long, ebony hair, soft and shining - but hair that I didn't care for in my shower drain. Attempts to operate on the drain were successful for the most part, although further time was wasted in repairing the loose, rusting (useless) hair catching contraption that popped surprisingly out and refused my reinsertion attempts.

Later on, I sat in bed sipping heavily chlorinated hot water from a hideous green thermos that had come with the room. I watched TV for a while, and then watched the cockroaches chasing each other around my bedside table. It was at about this point that I reflected that there's something to be said for staying with a family who takes care of you, and decided to limit my further adventures in Lan Ting. I've only stayed there one night since.
 

Lan Ting Out Front

The Third Floor

One thing that Lan Ting has got going for it is location. It's very close to Bei Ling tomb, right at the northern tip of Shenyang (Xiao's family in Hua Xiang are at the Southernmost end). I investigated the surrounds in the early morning, and found it is very close to the river, parks, and is on a cute tree-lined roadway that comes off a busy roundabout.

It soon became apparent to me that I'd have to make good on my side of the contract and actually stand in front of a classroom teaching English. This is something I quickly realised I didn't have a clue about how to do. Guan Ya, in this respect, weren't of much help: their comment when I asked about job training was, 'Well, it's your language, so you should find it quite easy'. I later heard from the other teachers, both the Americans and the Chinese, that when Chris is away, things aren't quite as cosy as usual. 

I did manage to get permission to watch another class one evening before actually teaching myself, and so called my new colleague Khang whom I'd met at Lan Ting, to see if he minded me watching him teach. Not a problem. I arrived at a class of about thirty children who were around the age of ten. Classes are generally taught by a Chinese teacher twice or three times a week, and in one of those lessons the foreign teacher presides over the class in tandem with their local counterpart to ensure that the kid's pronunciation is on track.

Khang was great - he wandered between the rows of giggling children who chorused together, echoing his examples. He would throw tiny balls of paper at sleeping students, and the Chinese teacher would step in where any complicated points needed to be introduced. Altogether, the kids seemed to have fun, and their English was pretty good. This was a surprise, as study at Guan Ya is in addition to the normal school classes they take in the day time. Competition for work is so great in China that a prime education is absolutely essential, and so children are pushed to excel from the earliest age. 

I walked downstairs afterwards, edging past the crowds of anxious waiting parents - all of whom eyed me with some mixture of suspicion and fear. I was, to them, some wealthy ambassador come to bestow the language of money upon their young hopefuls, a representative of the mysterious world beyond China in deference to whom they were offering their children, at an enormous cost. Education at Guan Ya is pricey, and yet I could see from the dress of the parents that these were not the elite of Shenyang society but merely those who were working themselves to the bone for their single offspring. I smiled at one wizened, forty something man in a cloud blue worker's cap; he flashed a frightened nod and his face took on an expression of tired concern.

Khang himself turned out to be a good source for information on the state of things at Guan Ya - one evening some time later we popped out for dinner - I took the opportunity to ask why the foreign teachers were 'put up with' at Lan Ting when the place was clearly (by his description) 'really cruddy'. He began his answer with, 'Lan Ting is run by the uncle of some friend....' and the answer was clear. No business gets done in China unless you're the uncle of someone's friend.

The time soon came for me to teach myself, and I arrived at the Zhong Shan branch (just a little way from Zhong Shan square, where Mao Zedong stands eternally reaching for his cellphone) to meet my counterpart for the first class, Hu Ping, whom I learned was also a new teacher. I could foresee difficulties there, with the both of us being fresh blood, but nodded and smiled all the same. I was told the class was one of the school's naughtiest - so I nodded and smiled some more.

And then, I found myself the object of attention of a small host of  toothy Chinese angels, them shifting restlessly in their seats, myself handed a classbook which was opened to a page upon which was printed the words 'on, under, in, by' - and then Hu Ping sat and waited.

I'd been instructed to teach in an American accent, given that it's the Americans that the Chinese would most like to be able to overcome. So, I picked up my chalk, wrote my name on the board, and welcomed the class in my best yankee nasal twang. They responded in kind.

Everything else went like magic. I leapt around the room, shaking hands with everyone, pulled out a spare desk, and had the whole class follow me in attempting to stuff ourselves in, under, over and by the desks. They were easy to delight, it wasn't difficult at all to fill the hour with further illustrations of the lesson. One of their vocab requirements for the day was the word 'octopus' - I decided to ask them to draw an octopus in the middle of their expensive course books, and found that children tend to be less naughty when you give them permission to be so. They drew a picture of their teacher - me - in the octopus. Oddly enough, not one of them drew my beard. It was loads of fun, and before long it was over, and another class filed in for a repeat of the same lesson.
 

The surprise for me was that I really love the job. One evening I sat with Cecily, another of the Chinese teachers, in a ring of chairs we'd formed in the centre of the room, upon each of which sat a gangly or chubby little five-year-old, legs barely reaching the floor. We had each of them in turn step up to any of the others they chose for a formal introduction, pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you too! Cecily was glowing as if she were about to pick them all up and cuddle them senseless.

The job is not without a shadow of grey ethics, however. I have a leaning towards idealism, I like to think that learning for pleasure is far more noble than learning for some financial opportunity - and it's fairly clear that English for the parents of these children is some cryptic foreign code that has been invented to keep wealth away from anyone who doesn't understand it. The feelings of the parents are more understandable when it is considered that they'll never speak English themselves. Perhaps they fear that they are willingly purchasing a degree of alienation from their own children. It's difficult to explain to a seven-year-old that English is actually a beautiful language that stands before a staggering literary culture waiting for them to descend upon if they work hard enough. I'm also led to wonder about the others who don't get the chance to study here.

I did see Chris and some of the other staff on the local TV channel one night, presenting a needy family with a cash grant for study, part of Guan Ya's charitable focus. It seemed pretty genuine, as opposed to the publicity stunt it might have been - Chris shuffled to the front, satchel in tow, placed the money on the table before the needy mother kneeling beside it, paused for effect, realised there wasn't any, and then shuffled back behind the Chinese staff.

Nowadays I turn up for work early. I enjoy chatting with the other staff, many of which are curious about my own country. I discovered that the disparity in pay between the Chinese teachers and the foreign teachers is greater than I'd thought. To be fair, wages for foreigners needs to be high if they're going to have any chance of attracting them to work here in the first place. Some of the Chinese teachers live in a dormitory, provided by the school, for which they have a 9 O'Clock curfew. I commented that this seemed vastly unfair, but they don't seem to mind. Apparently, a life without such rules is... dangerous?

More recently, I've been concerned about holding Guan Ya to their promise of financing my education in the Chinese language. I fear, however, that my Mandarin might be too poor for the levels taught at the local university - some of the foreign teachers studying there have excellent Chinese. One of the teachers, Sun Ya Tao, or Veronica, has offered to tutor me and I intend to take her up on the offer. I discovered that she was a literature major, like myself, and hoped she may be able to introduce me to Chinese poetry. I told her that I really loved Chinese characters - she disagreed, commenting that she found them 'stubborn'.

In the meantime, I've renewed my writing frenzy, and have been working hard on my own book. I've also bought a new toy - a CD walkman that plays the MP3 CDs I laboured over before coming to China, each containing around 12-15 hours of compressed, high quality music. At the top of the listening list, however, remains the Wang Fei album that was released in every Asian country except China last week (thank goodness for the Internet). As I'd suspected, Faye has departed even further from the mainstream scene and released an album that will see her fall sharply out of popularity within the next twelve months. I can't see anyone in China liking this album. It's fantastic.

I mentioned to Sun Ya Tao that I was interested in Faye's music, and she said, 'not you too - Chris is always talking about her'. It seems Faye is indeed the foreigner's choice.