This is not really a specific location. It is anywhere one westerner and more than 5 Chinese are located. With one stipulation – They only want to talk to you when it is has the "English Corner" Label. I have noticed that the Chinese won’t talk to me on the bus when I am bored out of my mind and would love some conversation. To counteract the boredom I take my iPod with me and listen to NPR’s Car Talk. Only problem is that when I laugh out loud at “Click & Clack the Tappet Brothers” they look at me very strangely and back away.
Back on topic. One of the dreaded assignments that you can get when teaching overseas is “English Corner”. You are assigned to report to a specific place at a specific time and wait for the Chinese students to crowd around you and ask you the same questions over and over. Do you like Chinese food? How long will you stay in China? How long have you been here? What places have you visited in China? Will you sing a song? Do you speak Chinese? (they like to laugh at my lame attempts). Do you like Hangzhou or West Lake or etc? and the (try to read it sounding like David Lettermen) Number 1 question, always asked by every person - Where are you from? (Make sure you read Nathan’s answer to this question in his blog). Last couple of Sundays I have actually ridden the hour long bus and voluntarily reported to West Lake’s English corner. This is due to the fact that 2 days without classes and without speaking to anyone except by SKYPE or email is my limit and (shhhh – don’t tell) I wanted an excuse to eat at McDonalds afterwards.
I had heard that the West Lake English Corner was a rather large gathering and it is. The minute you walk into the area, you are spotted as the new person the Chinese can practice their repertoire on. After we got thru the predicable questions I really enjoyed myself. This group had some older Chinese attendees so the topics were a lot more varied and interesting. I learned more from them than they did from me. First week we talked about retirement, health care, and Bush. This Sunday I brought my laptop and showed some of my iPhoto slideshows (of a wedding, my neighborhood, a fishing trip, and Zac & Nicole’s Florida Bike Trip). So our topics stemmed from the photos in addition to the predicable questions as mentioned above.
It is held in a beautiful setting with the only problem being that you are sort of stuck in one spot. The first Sunday, after 2 and half hours of standing in one location, my legs got really stiff. So I left, took a walk by the lake and then hopped into a taxi and began the frustrating process of showing the driver where to take me. I had an English map (with pictures) which I figured would be understandable to the driver. The second week I took a map that had Chinese characters because the first driver used the fact that the map was in English as an excuse to pretend he didn’t know where I wanted to go. He kept trying to tell me to get out of the car, but I pretended not to understand him. Poor guy didn’t know how determined I was to have my cheeseburger and fries. After much stalling he ended up taking me most of the way. He just kept talking Chinese jibberish the entire way and I just kept pointing directions and talking English jibberish. After I saw the Golden Arches a block or so away I let him get rid of me. The second week with the help of Tom, an English Corner attendee, who kindly walked me to the taxi and told the driver where I wanted to go – I got to my desired destination with no arguments. Tom (his English name & who is sitting next to me in the photo above) is an engineer at a local electric company who is interested in computers and reminds me of Jason B. who worked at the Perry Building with us. Not his looks but his personality. Both of them are just really nice young men.
Side Note: Sometimes it is very humorous to be in a situation where no one understands anyone else. Whenever I get a phone call, it is almost always a wrong number. After they say “way” a couple of times (Chinese "Hello") I go thru my repertoire of my 2 Chinese sentences. “I don’t understand.” And "I am American”. Sometimes they will hang up but others will just keep talking. When that happens I just start talking too. After a while they will finally realize how useless it is to keep up their end of the conversation and hang up, but it provides me with some live entertainment for a couple of minutes.
