Hidden talents?

I have a special love for Chinese brush painting. You can imagine my excitement when one of the young American China teachers here introduced me to her art teacher, Mrs. Zhang. Mrs. Zhang became my art teacher and I have been taking art lessons from her weekly since November of last year. Wednesday becomes the highlight of my week when I go to the Zhang's 5th floor apartment to take lessons.

Mrs. Zhang taught me how to do the regular brush painting. Then she started teaching me a special technique called "gong bi hua". It has been a fun experience. Below are my first 2 paintings.

Flying Tiger Museum

April 2, 2009

While we were in Chongqing, we had the privilege of visiting the Flying Tiger Museum. Chinese people have a special place in their hearts for this group of volunteers from the US during World War II. It was also special for me because my uncle, Shih Tze Pu, was a young Chinese Air Force pilot from Yunnan Province in Southwestern China, fighting the Japanese with the aid of Flying Tigers during this time.

American Volunteer Group - the Flying Tigers

A brief introduction from Wikipedia:

Flying Tigers was the popular name of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941-1942. Arguably, the group was a private military contractor, and the volunteers have also been called mercenaries. They were former United States Army (USAAF), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC) pilots and ground crew, recruited under Presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The group consisted of three fighter squadrons with about 20 aircraft each. It trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II with the intention of defending China against Japanese forces.

Slideshow of our visit to the Flying Tigers Museum in Chongqing on April 2, 2009

Three Gorges Dam

April 2-6, 2009

From Wikipedia: The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric river dam that spans the Yangtze River in Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei, China. It is the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. Except for a planned ship lift, all the original plan of the project was completed on October 30, 2008, when the 26th generator was brought to commercial operation. Six additional generators in the underground power plant are being installed, with the dam thus not expected to become fully operational until around 2011. By April 2009, it had generated 300 TWh of electricity, covering 30% its project cost.

Elwin and I joined 50-plus BYU China Teachers aboard the Victoria Cruise down the Yangtze River from Chongqing to Yichang, Hebei, a 500 mile trek. Along the way, we saw the 3 beautiful gorges, a very beautiful Lesser gorge and new villages for part of the 1.3 millions people who were relocated because of the project. Part of the amazing part was the water depth; originally, the water was 3' to 6' deep. After the dam was built, the water was about 250' deep, and the walls of the gorges were still steep, lush with greenery and shrouded in mist and broken clouds.
Once we reached the five locks, we waited until enough ships were prepared to pass through. Ours went in first on the right hand side; the wall was so close that we reached out and touched it. A large barge pulled in along our port side, and four additional ships came in behind us and the barge next to us. It took 4 hours for us to pass through the five locks; fortunately, it was at night so we were only awake for passing through the first two.

Enjoy the slideshow below. We highly recommend this trip. It was absolutely beautiful!

Chongqing, China

April 2-6, 2009 - Chinese Tomb Sweeping Holidays

Taking advantage of the holidays, we signed up with the BYU China Teachers group to tour Chongqing and take a boat down the Yangtze River to visit the 3 gorges. The Forbes came with us from Jinan. We left Jinan at 4:30 PM and arrived in Chongqing at around 7 PM. A tour guide with BYU sign welcomed us at the airport and took us on a short tour of the area and took us to the hotel downtown.

Chongqing is the largest and most populous of the People's Republic of China's four provincial-level municipalities, and has a registered population of 31,442,300 (2005). In fact, it is the largest city in the world today. We visited the Great Hall and the big dance floor where lots of people were dancing.

See the slides below of this lovely city.

A Private School in China

Our dear friends in Suzhou took us to their son's school for a visit while we were there. We looked at this school in total amazement. The name of the school is "Suzhou Foreign Language School", a private school, serving children from pre-school to 12th grade. The school has around 3000 students, who came from all over the world. There are children from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the US, some Europeans, and of course, the local Chinese who can afford the tuition (a whopping 50,000 RMB/year). The lower grades (pre-school to grade 5) have around 25 students in each class with an English speaking teacher and 2 Chinese teachers.

Suzhou foreign language school is seeking 2 foreign teachers for the new term in Sept 1,2009

Salary for ESL teachers for international classes : 10000RMB (1500 USD) per month for 20 classes/week,offices hrs required . from 8:30am-4:30pm

X Return air flight up to 10000RMB (on completion of a years contract)
X Private apartment on campus or housing allowance
X Free Internet access, feel utility and meals
X Maximum teaching hours of about 20 per week , 2days off per week , working hrs : 8:30am-5:30pm , Monday-Friday
X School will provide full working resident card and Z visa
X School will pay for full insurance
Minimum qualifications and experience required:
• Bachelor degree mandatory, .
• internationally recognised TEFL qualification preferable
• 1-2 years relevant experience in English language training
• Native speaker of English from USA/UK/CANADA

Requirements:
2 certificated teachers for Primary Grade One Immersion Program.
Teaching experience prefered.
References and photo album are available.

Please feel free to contact me at lilyzhou44@yahoo.com.cn

2. Sept.2007 -- 1 year contract, renewable
12,000RMB a month
Flexible schedule, fixed number of hours per week.
Excellent new furnished housing.
Paid return airfare. Over one month paid holidays.
Visa provided.

Requirements:
1 certificated Physics or Chemistry teacher and 1 certificated Math or Business Study teacher for A Level
curriculum.
Teaching experience prefered.
References and photo album are available.

a note: Please google this school and review the comments before committing.

New Semester at SDU

Schedule board in front of our classroom

Spring Semester, Feb. 23 - June 19

Our University Rep gave us a super schedule this semester. Elwin and I are teaching the 5 sophomore classes that I had from last semester, and 4 freshman classes, 2 from my last semester and 2 new ones. The best 2 things are:

1. Elwin and I team-teach 5 of the 7 classes: With 50+ students in each of our oral English class, team-teaching seems to be an answer to the problems of giving students opportunities to practice their speaking skills. It's working well so far.
2. All our classes are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays: this gives us a chance to travel China. So far, we have gone to Suzhou (about 1 1/2 hours west of Shanghai) and hope to visit other places too.

Medical students - about half male and half female in most classes
Boys and girls don't sit together unless you assign seats.

To add varieties to our Oral English classes, we've been using music Power Point in each of our classes. A wonderful lady who works as a BYU China teacher in Tienjian puts together wonderful songs with lyrics on PPT. Students sing along and practice their speaking skills. We have had some comments like: we look forward to going to the oral English class to listen to the beautiful music and practice our English. So far, we have used Celine Deon and Il Divo's "I believe in you", Wang Fei's "Eyes on you", Garth Brooks' "the river", and John Denver's "Country Roads". The girls love to sing along, but the most of the boys just mouth the words, whic is great too.

We also have a topic for each week where we do a short lecture and let the students do presentations one by one for 2 minutes. The students take this very seriously and usually write up a script to read. We have to encourage them not to use the script, but then they memorize the whole thing. The Chinese students have unbelievable memory skills. This came from their training in education. I am constantly amazed at how much people remember here. I would go to a store and the clerk would say, "ya, you were here 5 weeks ago and you bought a pink shirt in what size and how much you paid". It freaks me out sometimes, but then I remember they are very good at remembering things because of their training in schools.

The students work hard. Each group of 8 students work together and bring 3 words to post on the board. They usually have 18 or 21 words each week to work on. We give them a 3-minute vocabulary quiz at the beginning of each class. They do pretty well.

We also help them with difficult pronunciation, words and sounds, such as th, v, words end with consonants, etc. Elwin is very good at identifying those sounds and help the students a great deal with their pronunciation. I can see students gaining more confidence in their conversation.

This is the end of our 4th week. Time is flying...

Phew, that was close!

February 28, 2009

On that day, I was almost run over by a giant bus at the intersection of WalMart and Baotuquan Springs. Jinan is home to 9 million people. Any given day, the traffic is horrendous. This intersection may be the most congested in the city.

This was how close I was to the "giant bus"
Picture taken a few days after

I was crossing the intersection mentioned above with at least 50 people when I suddenly noticed a big bus turning left right into my path. It happened so fast that I froze, like a deer in the headlight. I heard my husband, who was ahead of me, yelling: come on. I walked forward, but another bus came charging down the road, making a left turn right next to the big bus. I was so scared that I moved back, then I was a few inches from the first big bus. I saw the bus driver staring down at me. I managed to move back further for the bus to get across, but then my limbs were numb…I could not move.

I don’t know how I finally made it to the other side. I just remember saying to my husband, we need a cab. I sure learned a lesson – Keep up when crossing a major intersection.