Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,

I'd like to start up a blog ring for foreigners teaching in China. Please check out my blog and email me if you'd like to start one up.

cheers,
duwei

http://www.duwaik.com/china/index.htm

Isn't the China forum on Dave's enough for you? There's plenty to read.

I see your blog has a lot about communism. I can't quite fathom why people still talk about it. It's as if people never mentioned Britain without talking abour our cruel monarchy, which often beheads people.

The place is so fantastically unequal! In the interests of truth and thwarting Big Brother let's drop the tired and loaded C word, even if the Chinese government is scared to.

woodcutter wrote:Isn't the China forum on Dave's enough for you? There's plenty to read.

Didn't notice them. Thanks for pointing them out.

woodcutter wrote:I see your blog has a lot about communism.

Actually, only the first page does.

woodcutter wrote:It's as if people never mentioned Britain without talking abour our cruel monarchy, which often beheads people.

Do people still talk about Britain?

woodcutter wrote:The place is so fantastically unequal! In the interests of truth and thwarting Big Brother let's drop the tired and loaded C word, even if the Chinese government is scared to.

Many Chinese words have multiple meanings. I think it's fair to say that the word "communism" does, too.

So, putting it a little differently, foreigners can always have a satisfactory conversation with an Englishman in total ignorance of ideas and terms like "Conservative" and "Labour", can they, woodcutter? (Still, I'd accept that in the UK, at least we have a nominal democracy of sorts, and the "choices" available can help make them topical, germane to and palatable/bearable in a conversation...).

I recall "translating" for some colleagues who spoke even less Chinese than I could questions such as "So, Mr Fan, what did you do during the Cultural Revolution? Uh-huh? Life must've been hard for you, then, right?" (These same guys also almost made me miss a plane from Hong Kong once by dragging me into a hostess bar - NOT THAT I WANTED TO GO, they had the tickets!!! - and spending the next few hours asking the mama-san questions such as "So, do your daughters work here?" These were genuine questions, not wind-ups! ).

Quite different even from asking my grandparents what they did during the war...but then, civil wars and internal strife perhaps exert a greater fascination, and luckily, we in the UK have been spared quite the same tumultuous times as China has in the last half of the just gone century. Maybe we could spare the Chinese the need to keep digging it all up and just watch a movie, or use our imaginations instead?

Ah but what a cosy liberal live-and let live worldview that is. People more "in the thick of it" might want to be more active in their dissent and could conceivably welcome discussion and debate on political matters, present and past.

Edit: I wrote the above tree-hugging-then-tree-felling cr*p without having followed the link. Seems okay (tongue-in-cheek) to me.

shaxper wrote:Do people still talk about Britain?

I thought that at least was pretty funny.