The School

The Main Campus is in the City of Tai'an. It is in the less attractive west part of town. The school has approximately 10,000 students across 3 campuses. Most class sizes are 50 - 55 - mainly boys. It is a private vocational school who have to have family support them to pay the tuition fees which I am led to believe are quite expensive.

The school is owned by Shandong Electric Power. It has affiliations with Singapore Shelton School of Commerce, TAFE, Auckland Institute of Studies, New Zealand and Arizona State University of America.

The school has track and field, basketball courts, football field and volleyball courts. It appears that everybody lives on Campus, from current teachers, retired teachers, foreign teachers, students and anyone who has ever had an association with the school.

There are two canteens on Campus, one for the students and one for everyone else. I have never been to either as I am led to believe that the meals are not that good.

There are many street vendors outside the front gate. You walk through the stalls dodging cars, bung bungs, bicycles, motor scooters and anything else that moves. You can buy almost anything at the street stalls. A favorite with the Western Teachers is the Chinese Hamburger. It is a bun that is warmed on a grill with pork, egg and lettuce for the huge extravagance of Y2 ie 33c!

The fruit and vegetable stalls are good - I buy my fruit from them. I don't buy any vegetables as I eat out every night. At $2 a night why would I be bothered to cook.

The students range in age from 16 - 22 and have been learning English for 3 years. Although they rarely use it. They live a spartan existence in the college dorms where there are 6 to a dorm. They have no bathing facilities in their dorms. The students do not have any cooking facilities in their dorms either and must rely on the canteen. If they want to leave the campus they must get a leave pass which I understand is very difficult.

Education in China is very competitive and very hard. I'm not sure that people back at home would do as many hours of schooling as the Chinese. It is very hard being a student here. Their parents pay high tuition fees and have high expectations. After all they are depending on their children to provide for them in their latter years so they want them to have good paying jobs.

The students must also clean the classrooms. In fact everywhere you go you see the workers doing the cleaning. We pay cleaners at home to do that. I even had a cleaner for my home! I would dare not tell them that.

The students would love to have greater access to computers for study. They actually have computer lessons but no computers???

I find it interesting that some students feel the pressure of the competition in Education, some seem to take it in their stride, others complain and then there are the class sleepers.

School excursions are unheard of. The typical Chinese way to teach is by chants. Of course they seem a little confused and overwhelmed when the have a foreign teacher who wants to do more with them. Even asking them to move seats on some occasions has been a great battle.

From a teaching prospective the facilities are poor. The blackboards have every marking on them from their 50 years of use, no dusters for cleaning just a wet rag, the floors are concrete with no coverings, no heating and no fans.

My apartment is my office with a school desktop and printer. I should be thankful for this as if you want to print or photocopy you have to plead. I find other teachers using my printer and going to the copy shop to print 50 copies! I am happy for them to print 50 from my printer but they never seem to want to do this.

The school has a couple of ponds. Almost every day you see some Chinese person fishing. I am concerned that they eat them because it is stagnant water. Perhaps they just do it for entertainment!

No space is ever wasted. Between the foreign teachers apartments and the Chinese Teachers Offices someone has created a vegetable garden behind the hedges. Every now and then you will see someone pick the vegetables.