Real class

So today I emerged myself once more into the bliss of administration confusion at Shanghai Normal University, this time to find out my class, class schedule and buy my course books.

Drawing up to the ICCS building there was a small crowd of people around several boards outside which seemed to look like our course details. Whoa! There was hope yet for good management!

My enthusiasm was shortly lived as I walked up to the board to see that everything was in Chinese and there seemed to be a mystical system to work out your schedule. Who'd have thought the Krypton Factor was alive and well in Shanghai!...lol

After finding my name on a piece of paper pinned to a board I stood and stared at it blankly for a few minutes until I noticed Arthur, one of the Newcastle uni students I had met on Wednesday. Looking like he knew what he was doing I asked him how to work out my details, which he thankfully took me through:

1. Find your name on the lists, at the top of the page will be your level and group number
2. With your level and group number find your class timetable on another board, also find a friendly and knowledgable student to translate your lessons into English and Pinyin for you
3. Just to be on the safe-side copy all the Chinese characters to get your wonderful Chinese girlfriend to confirm their translation
4. Find a third board which has a table of times corresponding to the numbered rows your lessons were on (why they didn't just put the times on the timetable, hence the development of the word 'timetable', I don't know, the word 'templates' comes to mind...lol). Again, more dismay as you realise your schedule is not 8-11 as stated on the website but a lovely mixture of times spread across the day just to keep things interesting
   
5. Finally, once your friendly student has departed, stare blankly at a map (again all in Chinese) on a fourth board for several minutes as you realise you don't know which building(s) the classes are to be held in

After realising my lack knowledge of the location of my classes I decided to buy my course books and work that out later, as we were provided with a map on registration day. This part was actually easy, being so far down the educational scale I surmised that I should ask for elementary level one course books. Arthur and his other uni friends didn't have it so easy as the boards outside did not publish which stage you were at, only your level, there being elementary, intermediate and advanced stages (and many levels inbetween each of these). Also, in traditional Chinese style, no receipts were issued when purchasing the books as an outside shop had provided them and were on a tax dodge...lol



So, books in bag I ventured out to solve the mystery of the classroom location. By the boards I got chatting to John, a young Australian from Melbourne, who had managed to coerce the only English speaking faculty member about out of his role of assisting the book sales and out to the boards to aid him in his solution to the problem. Once he had his time table sorted he got the guy to find the buildings to go to for classes, so I strung along for the ride. Shanghai Normal University has two campus's, both facing each other on opposite sides of Guilin Road. It seemed that both our buildings (South Building and Building No 5) were on the East side campus so we ventured across Guilin Road. After some walking we managed to find the South Building but Building No 5 was eluding us. After questioning many people, students and teachers alike, no-one seemed to know were it was so we decided to go back to the map and check the details again. On the way our guide decided to ask the guards at the main gate if they knew No 5's where abouts and it turned out that the ICCS building was No 5! They have been refering to it as the ICCS building all week and now they decide to change tack, wonderful!



Well, the final piece to the puzzle was put in place so, tired and hungry, I decided to cycle to Yaning's office to grab some lunch and pay her a visit (not in that order of course!;o) ). After getting home I remembered I was going to use the map provided in my welcome pack to find Building No 5, it's a good job I didn't as the numbers were all different to those we encountered during the day!...lol

Let's get physical

So, today I had to turn into uni to get a physical examination done for the transfer of my holiday visa to a resident's permit.

As usual it was the disorganised fiasco I have come to expect. I collected my form from a lady at the entrance to the ICCS building (the admin building for foreign students learning chinese) which I dutifully filled out. All your ususal details with a few 'unsures' thrown in for good measure, just to keep the confusion going...lol

The next step was to work out which room I was supposed to go to next. Three room were being used, one had people clutching at their arms where they had just given blood, one had a queue of people clutching their examination form and photocopies of their passports (with passport photos attached) and so I reasoned that I sould go to the last as I had none of the above. Having made the right choice I went in to collect my photocopied passport details and passport photos which I had handed in on registration on Monday. The admin officer there asked my for my pink slip (my copy of my registration form) at which point I noticed that instead of having 'sex' or 'gender' on the form there was a box labelled 'sexuality', what kind of examination was this!...lol

Moving onto the next queue I waited to enter the room people were exiting with a plaster their arm, so I was to give blood, step one of the exam sussed. Whilst waiting to enter door number two I got chatting to the guy infront of me (Chinese, with the accent, had an American passport but had spent the last 17 years in Germany) and we noticed that those who had just given blood were being escorted in threes to a large bus with blacked out windows outside the building. Again, with no information available as to what was to happen on the bus we began to speculate, urine and stool samples being brought into the conversation from a note at the bottom of the examination form. I'd be buggered if I was going to drop my kex and take a dump in a small paper tray, I have a hard enough time peeing in public toilets!...lol

Entering room two we had our forms checked for correctness and moved through a series of laptop equiped stations, each one performing a single duty, and not too accurately! Although my passport photocopy clearly said 1969 as the year on my birthdate the card that was produced to accompany my many other forms had my age as 36 and when I brought this error up I was told not to worry as it didn't matter. If only they invested so much enthusiasm into everything else they do here things would be very different, wait a minute they do!...lol Moving on I paid my fee, which seemed to vary according to the country you were from (or maybe I got an OAP discount due to my age;o) ), and was ushered behind a curtain to give blood. Thankfully, there was a box of clean new needles infront of me, but it was a little disconcerting to see the rack of blood filled vials next to it.

Blood sucking out the way I was shown to the third room to await my turn on the magical mystery bus. Getting to the door of the bus the previous three student were spat out and we were ushered on and prompted to slip on blue paper foot covers, which got me wondering what they were going to do and why would they not want me to make a mess of my trainers. Moving to the first station (yes more stations to attend) I was laid on a bed, hooked up with electrodes (maybe they were going to test my conviction to learn Chinese) and given an EKG (electric cardio gram) and my internal organs were checked with a mobile ultrasound unit for fitness, I was pleased to hear that they were all present and correct. The next station was a sight test and blood pressure, which I blitzed with flying colours (the £999 spent at Optimax to get my eyes lasered paying off again...lol). Finally we had to have a chest x-ray. Having spent some time working for a medical imaging services company all I could think about was kVs, mAs, entrance surface doses and all that backscatter. Hopefully the Chinese medical industry has well trained radiographers and engineers, if not I could always start a consultancy company and introduce them to quality assurance, but then again I want to enjoy my life and work in China so I may leave that as a last resort...lol

Once everything was done I was shown the door to street level. Again I was lost as what was to happen next so I just sauntered about until it was obvious that was it and I made my way home.

Opening Ceremony

Well, today was the opeining ceremony of the language course. There was supposed to be an exam too, to test my level of chinese, but being on the first level of the elementary course they said I didn't need to do it, nice of them to tell me before I rode 40 mins in 30deg heat...lol

The ceremony was held in the university auditorium, a fairly large room full of aircraft like chairs, including the white covers over the headrests. Speaches were made, all in Chinese of course and all urging us to be good dutiful students. As the speaches went on people moved around the room taking publicity photos and one guy had a camera to tape the precedings, strangely enough they all seemed to concentrate on the westerners in the crowd, I guess any of the Asian nationalities present didn't interest them.

To be honest, the only benefit I got from going into uni was getting chatting to some other students, one from Aus and the rest from Newcastle Uni. I did take some pics but they didn't turn out too well, ho hum...lol

Back to school

Back to school....I don't know about you but I hated that phrase when I was a kid, plastered everywhere trying to sell school clothes and equipment to troubled parents at the end of the summer, for me it seemed to hold some sort of message of doom.

Well, anyway, I'm signed up for my Chinese language course, with only a physical examination to go for my application for a residence permit so I don't have to leave the country every two months as I do now on my holiday visa.


As you may or may not know, I will be attending Shanghai Normal University. It seems to be a nice place and the people working there seem to be a lot nicer than the ones Yaning and I encountered elsewhere. The next step is to go for my physical on Wednesday, do a little exam on Thursday (which I may be able to skip as I am a beginner..woo hoo) and then be assigned my class and buy my textbooks, then I am a fully fledged university student and I can wear my complimentary Shanghai Normal University t-shirt with pride! As shown in the picture below...lol


Registering for the course was no mean feat. There are less levels in a game of Sonic the Hedgehog! Here's a quick rundown:

1. Earlier in the month I was assigned a place by the handing over of the 50USD admin fee
2. Next was to go to room 103 to get my first registration form
3. Next was room 105 to pay the registration fee (9130RMB, about £630), only to find they don't accept bank cards so I had to wait about an hour for a minibus to take a group of us to the bank, I was served first and then had to wait another hour/hour and a half for the rest to get sorted, blasting my 8:30am 'early arrival to beat the crowds' out of the water
   
4. After divvying up the reddies (and 100RMB notes are red too!...lol) it was off to room 104 to get my details put on the system. A snake like queue that wound along one wall of the outside corridor and into an arrangement of seats along all the walls of the room, ending at the door where you can then be seen to
5. Next was room 106 to get my photo taken for my student ID card, I don't know why as I coughed up six passport sized photos when I payed my admin fee about a month ago
6. Visa assistance was next, here I had to choose between a residence permit (if taken I have to have a physical examination and will be able to leave the country and come back freely without the loss of my visa) or a student visa (if taken I can't leave the country until my course is finished, otherwise I will need to apply for another visa). In addition to the physical I need to go to my local police station and prove I'm living at the address I used to register for the course and as a little prize I get a yellow certificate which is to be presented at the visa alteration day on the 20th Sept
7. Finally, for today, I had a little interview with one of the teachers to evaluate my level of chinese. I say little, as that was what it was, one line of chinese from her and me sitting dumblike opposite her. Needless to say she marked me for the elimentary class...lol

Well, that's it for this installment, I'll update this post with the rest of the details later in the week, who knows what may be in store!

P.S. There may be a drop in image quality in the future as I am now the proud owner of a mobile with a camera, yes I have been dragged into the 21st Century of mobile phone technology. The reasons were two fold, first I wanted a lighter camera than the one I have been using to get snaps for the blog more easily (carrying the big bugger about was a pain!) and second I can write in both english and chinese in the text messages so I will be able to communicate with any none-english speaking/reading friends and get to practice my chinese reading/writing.

Shaolin Soul

On Wednesday night Yaning and I went to The Shanghai Lyceum Theater to see a Gung Fu show called Shaolin Soul, apparently by Shaolin monks but Yaning seemed to think it was by students from schools in the region the Shaolin Temple is situated, as she said the actual Shaolin Temple has put in place rules preventing the monks from doing performances in order to peserve the reputation of the Shaolin Temple, after all they are buddhists and are supposed to be above all this sensationalism and pride etc.

A similar show has made trips to the UK a couple of times with great success. From what I could tell, this show was smaller, due to the size of the venue probably, but had a bit more in the way of Gung Fu and Qigong (pronounced chi-gong).



I bought a DVD of the second trip to the UK a few months ago and much of what was on it was in Wednesday's show, although on Wednesday there were explanations of the weapons used and the basic principles and reasons why the Shaolin practice certain styles of Gung Fu and methods of Qigong that weren't on the DVD.

The show ran for a couple of weeks and by all accounts wasn't very successful so we had no problem buying tickets from the touts outside. Yaning, with her wonderful bargaining powers, managed to get us two VIP tickets for the price of one (280 Yuan in all, about £20).


All of the members of the group performing were in their teens and early twenties, with the obvious inclusion of a few kids for entertainment value. The shots below are of one of the kids displaying stomach strength by sucking a bowl to his body with his abdomen and being lifted by the bowl.

I did enjoy the show but would have liked to see some older members of the Shaolin schools, or even the Shaolin Temple, on the stage and perhaps more technical or specialised sequences performed, but then I guess I'm more of a Wushu and Qigong freak than the average member of the audience...lol

These images are of certain feats using the power of chi energy directed to different parts of the body to protect it from harm by the spears, and the one on the right displays the use of chi to project a needle through a piece of glass to burst a balloon without shattering the glass, only leaving a small hole where it passed through.