Diary_Day 3: Scat's Chengdu campus

Our day started with another Chinese language lesson – numbers this time and I can now successfully order ‘one cup of coffee’ at McDonalds at the end of the day.  This seems to be the only place that I can get coffee, so it is a real treat. Speaking of McDonalds, the chain is certainly not prolific in this part of China.  I have seen just the one next door so far and although KFC is apparently huge in China, I haven’t seen any in Deyang.

After class we were taken by Lucy, a young Chinese teacher who has been assigned the Interior Design team to take under her wing, to another part of this huge campus to see the building construction program.  We were amazed to see a class of around one hundred young students, all dressed in the 1970s blue boiler suits that we immediately associate with Communist China, practising laying bricks. 

 Brick laying: part of the curriculum for building students

We then saw two areas that have been set up as exemplar buildings for the students to learn from.  One was a timber construction full size ‘house’ and the second was a full size apartment block that has been built with several deliberate mistakes for the students to learn from them. 

  Full apartment block with exposed elements   as learning tools.

Timber two-storey house, as built in China

It was interesting to see the safety signage in this area.  Like most signage, cute characters are used.

We passed a ‘space age’ designed building, obviously unoccupied and we wondered why.  It is only now we are back in Melbourne that I have learned that this building was built as a sports stadium.  It was occupied for about six months but has remained empty since, as it is so poorly built that it has been deemed unsafe.  We saw a magnificent  digital artist’s impression of the great hopes SCAT had for this structure.

Sadly obsolescent, this magnificent building was occupied for only a few months.

Lucy then led us back to where we had our elaborate Sichuan dinner yesterday and we were amazed to find that she had organized a similar banquet for us today.  It was without the formality of yesterday and thankfully no chicken feet or pigeon soup, but in similar style, the dishes just kept coming out.  Again I surprised myself with eating a full Sichuan meal, even venturing into some of the rather spicy dishes and enjoying them.

We then embarked on a forty-five minute bus trip to SCAT’s second campus on the northern outskirts of Deyang.  There we were to see where Interior Design is taught.  It is a brand new campus, only opened six months ago.  Interior Design used to be at the Deyang campus but when the Chengdu campus was built as a result of the 2009 earthquake, this faculty was moved to the new location.  What an eye-opener it was!  There are massive tracts of land where buildings are still to be erected and the over-all feeling was one of a desolate place of study.  All the buildings are massive, with the biggest of them all, the canteen, being about eight hundred metres removed from where the students take their classes. Soon after our arrival, the students began their trek back to classes and it was like a never-ending trail of ants as far as the eye could see.

SCAT students make their way back to class after the lunch break

Student work was displayed around the building we visited and it was most impressive.  Our students were excited to see work very similar to that which they have done over the two years of their course.

  

We were shown an amazing model of the Eiffel tower, built by four students in just two days.  It stood head high and was most intricately built of bamboo sticks, skewers and tooth picks.  Every last detail of the tower was included and we were blown away.

Lucy managed to get us into one of the classes in progress.  I was so glad to have the opportunity to see teaching in action Chinese style.  It seems that engagement by the students is an option, with many of them chattering or on their phones while the teacher presented the lesson on Powerpoint.  I have heard so much about the typical classroom, that I don’t think this was a matter of bad class control, it is just the way things are here.  Lucy interpreted what was being taught – all in Chinese characters with no pictorial embellishment to illustrate or lighten the topic.  Again it was very much the same content that we deliver in our course, which was reassuring to me as I will probably be teaching in China at the end of next year. 

Through Lucy, I asked the teacher if I could address the class.  She graciously agreed and I went straight into school teacher mode, clapping my hands to get their attention and then telling the students who we are and that we came from Australia.  They were staggered to learn that our students study twenty-nine subjects in two years and that they have a great deal of homework.  I asked them what subjects they study but all they were able to tell me was Interior Design.

The bus trip between Chengdu and Deyang (which we did in the dark on Sunday night), was most interesting. It was all farmland and was a real experience.  Dotting the way all along the highway we saw workers in the field – hoeing, stooking hay, even one who was sowing seed by hand.  Not a tractor in sight, it was all manual work.  The crops were vegetables and lots of hay – interesting in that we saw no animals apart from a small herd of goats.  I chatted to Lucy as we travelled and she told me that the average farm plot is around one acre.  Naturally she was staggered when I told her that my house is on half an acre and that we are by no means rich people.  When I told her of the size of our farms and our cattle stations, she was incredulous.

We had promised our beautiful young Chinese girls who are working with our girls on their project that we would let them take us to a good place to eat and so tonight was the night.  Lo and behold, we sat up to our third Sichuan banquet in two days!  This time though, there was a table that wanted spicy and a table that wanted not spicy, so naturally I was on that table.  The food was delicious, especially the duck pancakes, a dish that I will look for in Chinese restaurants from now on.

The meal over, we walked through the streets and came upon dancing in the city square.  There were hundreds of people ballroom dancing to the music that was piped over the loud speaker.  This is a nightly occasion and the local people do it as a form of exercise.  As well as the main dance area, we came across several small pockets of the square where they were also dancing or were engaged with the karaoke machine. 

As soon as we came across the dancing, several of us joined in – our style rather than ballroom dancing.  Soon there was a local guy who joined us.  Within a very short space of time, the circle had grown to about two hundred people who just formed a dance circle and took turns to do whatever dance style took their fancy.  I was even in there at one stage, doing the twist! The atmosphere was electric! The locals just loved it – except of course for those who tried their best to ignore us and who kept on ballroom dancing. The police and the army guys stood by watching and their faces told that they were enjoying the show.  At one stage the SWAT team got out of their van to watch what was going on and they too were enjoying the spectacle.  This went on for about forty-five minutes until we slowly disbanded and went off for a well-earned drink.  As we walked away, the locals all called goodbye to us, shook our hands and wanted to talk to us.  How glad we were that we had learned to say ‘I come from Australia’!

 Dancing in Wen Mao Square: almost any time of the day or night you can find people dancing for exercise

Students and teachers alike had a wonderful time dancing in the square.

The police and the army kept a watchful eye on the fun.

  

 

Diary_Day 1: To Deyang

Usually a topic of little note, our first day proved to be a little different.
For a start, it was our second day that proved in the end to be our first. As Roger and I were driving down to Melbourne to meet our group at the appointed time of 7pm sharp, ready for a 10:10pm take-off, I received a message that the flight was delayed a massive 11 hours and would not leave until 8:45 the next morning. This turned into being a 9:30am take-off and so now here we are, not yet having crossed the Asian coastline and we are meant to be in the midst of exploring our surroundings. We are all rather cross about this but of course there is nothing to be done about it.
Our flight on Sichuan Airlines is worthy of description as it is a foretaste of how differently things are done in China. The first hour or so was quite the usual, except for the safety instructions which proved to give quite some amusement. They included footage of people mounting the emergency chute head first and then how one should lie in a life raft. Then there was the footage of all liferaft occupants hand paddling to safety in unison. The fact that this was all shot in a large swimming pool just added to the amusement.
I need to also pen my amazement at how, immediately after the seatbelt sign was turned off, the flight attendants went around the cabin pulling down the window shades with a silent air of ‘we will not have light in this aeroplane!’. Apart from the occasional peep outside to see if it is still daylight, no one has yet defied this tyranny. Discussion amongst my colleagues concluded that its purpose is to herd us all into an ‘eat then sleep in order to keep control’ mentality.
The flight attendants – all females dressed in magnificent silk outfits- busied themselves first with distribution of peanuts (an interesting choice in this day of all pervasive anaphalactic reactions, especially to peanuts) and then of a very palatable meal. That was basically the last we have seen of them. They are certainly not plying us with never-ending offers of drinks etc. However, a walk down the back of the plane was to educate me that people are helping themselves to drinks and more peanuts as they want them. My mention of coffee had a young man who had been sitting in the back of the galley jump up and pour me a ready sugared cup of milky coffee. Needless to say after a few sips, the coffee found its way to the bin. Meanwhile, the beautiful flight attendants are just sitting chatting amongst themselves. Obviously things are done differently in China and I am keen to find out more.
At Chengdu we were met by a display of cute pandas, for this is the province of the panda research base.

 

Cute toy pandas at the airport.
A lovely surprise on our arrival was to find that Chengdu Airlines have given all passengers 500 Yuan (around $100) as compensation for the late departure.
SCAT (our college) had arranged a bus to take us to Deyang. It was a surprising ninety minute trip, with the distance between Chengdu and Deyang being around Melbourne-Ballarat equivalent. Driving through Chengdu, we were amazed at the size of one particular building which is apparently the biggest in the world. It is said to contain ski slopes, a beach, a wave pool etc as well as hotels and shopping malls. We will be visiting it on our weekend visit to Chengdu.

 

Chengdu’s Global Centre – the world’s largest building
After checking in to our hotel, Greg, the NMIT offshore coordinator who spends a great deal of time in Deyang introduced us to O2, a coffee shop that has western

food. I get the feeling that I be spending quite a lot of time at O2. At night the street is lit up with these beautiful Chinese lanterns.