A special girl called Twilight.

Twilight was one of our favourite students at the first university we went to teach at, in Longyan. She was one of Peter’s students, and considering they were all very shy to start with, Twilight was pretty outgoing and confident. She got involved with anything happening on campus and was willing to give anything a go. She taught me some Chinese, although I was a terrible student, and she would run messages for us whenever we needed help.

Twilight on the right, with her parents in 2006.. They took Peter and I out for lunch one day when we were living in Longyan.

 

This is an excerpt from my book. I wrote a lot about Twilight. "The Chinese give a great deal of serious thought when it comes to naming their children. Twilight’s family name is Ma. This word means horse. Her first name means going a long way, being successful. The Chinese are inclined to use words as names, words with quite beautiful meanings. So her name meant ‘going a long way like a horse, and having a successful journey.’ It would be comparable to us calling our child ‘Happy Successful Kerr’.

When Twilight started university her father also chose her English name. We asked why he chose Twilight. She said because it not only means the end of the day but also dawn, so this name could mean the beginning of a day, a new dawning in her life, with a long happy day in front of her. Lovely isn’t it?"

Twilights mother cooked lunch for me when I visited Kunshan.

Twilight was a Longyan girl, and knew the place like the back of her hand. If we wanted to buy something she knew where to find it. China is a funny place when it comes to shopping. Although they have the shops along the streets, often shops are also on the second and third floors of buildings but all hidden away, and we were stunned at times to find all sorts of things one or two levels up. (When I was in Putian I couldn’t find the post office. There had to be one, but I never saw it. That’s because it was on the second floor of a building.)

Sometimes I would praise Twilight for finding some shop I wanted she would just say, ‘the sign is there’, but of course all in Chinese and unreadable by us.

Kunshan downtown. Note the motor bike on the right. Mother driving, father behind, holding a toddler all wrapped up against the cold.

 

So Twilight, like Alex, became part of our Chinese family while we were in Longyan, and we used her frequently as our translator.

While I was in China this month, I visited Suzhou, and Twilight is now a married woman with a baby and lives in a town called Kunshan, halfway between Shanghai and Suzhou. Once she knew I was going to Suzhou, I knew, come hell or high water, she was going to meet up with me, and so she did. We had two days together.

Twilight in 2013 with her baby and husband. Note the heavy clothes. It was around zero this day, freezing cold, having snowed a couple of nights before. One tiny heater was on, but everyone wears many layers of clothes rather than use heating.
 

Twilights apartment block. They live on the 8th floor.

 Her baby is two months old, and her and her husband run a small engineering factory. At the moment her mother is staying with them to help with the baby. Actually, having a baby in China is very different from what we are used to. The new mother has a woman, usually the girl’s mother, come and stay with them for at least the first month.  The new mother does nothing for the first month, and I have heard is not supposed to bath or do any work, concentrating on caring for her baby. In Twilights case, her mother is staying on for some months.

No space goes to waste. This little plot of veges was planted outside their factory. Someone is caring for this little garden. The blue is the side of a chook pen. Unfortuantely the cabbages did not like the recent snow, and they looked a bit the worse for wear.

Twilight and her husband came and picked me up from Sam and Ethel’s place in Suzhou and took me to their place in Kunshan, also driving me around Kunshan, as I had never been there before. It was a lousy day, cold, bleak and wet, but I have to say that Kunshan is a really nice place. It’s a new city, built around 10 or 15 years ago, clean, well set out, and most people seem to obey the road rules.

I took this picture above through the car window. You will notice several tall black things, one just to the right of the power pole. China has a couple of nice months of weather during spring and autumn, but the rest of the time its stinking hot or freezing cold. Up north although the winters are freezing, during the summer, the weather supports tropical plants easily. So there are many palm trees around the cities in China. But palm trees do not like the cold and snow, so all the cities wrap up their tender trees for the winter, giving them lovely warm overcoats.  Here you can see some palm trees with their winter coats on. In the spring they will all come off, and lo and behold, back to tropical trees again.

One of the buidings in Kunshan's downtown. It's a shame it was such a lousy day, none of the pictures give a very good impression of the place. But this is one town that I could happily live in. On a good day it must be really nice.

 

Twilight took me to her home for lunch, prepared by her mother. So we had a good meal of fish, pork, and noodles, amongst other things. Like all Chinese, they tucked away a large quantity of food and were constantly urging me to eat more, more, more. I just couldn’t keep up with the Chinese appetites, no matter where I ate.



Oh well, you'll just have to tip your computer sideways. I don't know why it has done this, the original is the right way up and I have loaded it and flipped it several times, but it will not load the right way up.

Twilight features a great deal in the book I wrote about our first year living in China. I had taken a copy to give to Twilight. Here I am holding my book, ready to give it to her. We were having lunch at one of my favourite restaurants in Suzhou, a little dumpling shop at the In City Mall. The last school I taught at was in this mall.

  She always had a soft spot for Peter, and has kept in touch with us over the years. After we finished our year teaching in China, we had three weeks travelling, and both Alex and Twilight came to Suzhou to meet up with us for a few days before we came back to Australia. It is rare to see Chinese people display emotion, but when we were at the airport, Twilight was sobbing her heart out as she was saying goodbye to us. She will always have a special place in our hearts.

 

Longyan Campus

My dear daughter, long suffering and hardworking has been putting up  my posts on this blog because I can’t access it from China. From now on she will just post the text and there will be a link to my website where I am also loading up the posts and all the pictures. Please follow the links at the end of each post from now on to see all the pictures associated with the posts.  Thanks.

Coming back here after six years has been an interesting experience. Staying with Debbie is good, Peter and I were good friends with her during our first year here, and she has hardly changed at all. Her little flat is nice, but like all Chinese places the floors are ceramic tiles, the walls are tiles or plastered, there is no carpet, so they are quite cold.

My bed is very warm and cosy and I am sleeping really well. I think I have adapted to China time rather than Aussie time. The two hours makes a difference in the sleeping patterns.

I went with Debbie and spoke to some of her classes. It was nice to be in front of a black board again, good fun, and the students here really are very well behaved. I also think they are coming here to university now with better English than when we were here. The middle school seems to be doing a good job. Even the freshmen had pretty good English skills and much of the speaking has the prepositions in the right place, which is one of the hardest things for Chinese students to learn.

The actual campus is lovely. Well set out with trees and gardens. This is the round building we were supposed to teach at, but only go to visit a few times. It is also on the edge of town, and well set back from the road so it is quiet, we hardly hear any traffic noise. 

Clark is now a teacher at the Number 1 middle school here in Longyan. He was one of the best speakers at the school when we were there. He is courting a girl at the moment. He is just 30 years old, a good time to marry.

Even in the coldest weather there is  no heating, but this room seemed warm enough when I was there. They are used to wearing their heavy coats and clothes indoors, even in the house it is normal, rather than using power. Heating is usually only turned on in exceptional circumstances in Chinese homes. They generally have 3 or 4 layers of clothes on and woollen longjohns too.

The architecture for this university was based on the Tulou. Link to here……..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulou  

 These are round stamped-earth buildings that are unique to this part of China, in fact I think this is the only place i the world that has these. So this whole university was based on a round building concept. This is a photo I took when Peter and I visited some of these unusual buildings not far from Longyan.

So it has been an interesting time. The town of Longyan is changing, some lovely big buildings, more modern, but the old part is still the same, old and grubby and smelly in comparison to what we have at home. Although I really enjoyed my few times in the classroom, there is no desire to come back to it.

Follow this link to see the pictures…..Link to here.

http://www.englishstoriesforfun.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=594&action=edit&message=1

One of the nice things about being a teacher is the ongoing contact we have with our students.

 

Today I was sent this photo of Emily, one of my students in China.  Peter and I are still in contact with many of the students we had in China, and Emily was at Longyan University, which was our first teaching job in  China. While we were there, the students became our surrogate children.

Weddings in China are very different to weddings in the West. One of the big cultural differences between the East and the West is this:

In the West, people fall in love then marry.

In the East, (China anyway) usually people marry then hopefully fall in love.

Arranged marriages are still quite common, not so much in the sense that the bride and groom have no say in the matter, but marriages are often based on social and financial grounds. Generally, the groom will be introduced to different girls by his family, and eventually he will choose one. Ideally it should be a girl that the family thinks is suitable on all levels, and one that will fit into their own particular social sphere.

When a young man is introduced by a family member to a prospective bride, there will be a meeting arranged where the adults will be there, and the girl and boy look at each other and decide if they want to take it any further. Sometimes the prospective bride and groom will not even speak to each other, just look. If the groom likes the look of the bride, he will arrange for a family member to tell the girl and her family, and then he will ask her out, usually to dinner.

They will then spend quite some time getting to know one another. Sometimes these pairs will eventually marry and sometimes they realise they are not suited so it ends.

Emily, above, is not yet married. They will sign the marriage papers some weeks or months before the wedding party, and they spend another day or two having photos taken so a very beautiful photo album is compiled. They will usually have all this done and the photo album ready for their wedding day. This is the day of what we would call the 'wedding reception'. They have a large party and invite all their friends and relatives. There are often several hundred people at the wedding party.

Food is a very important part of Chinese culture and at a wedding there is a huge amount of food that comes out over the period of one or two hours. Eveyone sits at tables, usually ten to a table and enjoys a wonderful feast. There are other customs involved, and at the end of a very long day, the couple are considered to be married in the Chinese style.

Many of our Chinese students are getting married as this is an auspicious year for marriage and for babies according to the Chinese calendar, so we are getting more photos like the one above from students getting married.

Doesn't she look lovely?