The Hopkins of Hangzhou

Another post by Katy. Tom said he wanted to write this but has fallen asleep so thought I would as wanted to keep going with the daily updates. I feel it helps with keeping my thoughts in order.

Both of us are finding ways to occupy ourselves. Tom with his warhammer which is nothing new and me with a jigsaw that has a fiendish amount of dark blue.

Tom also spent today tidying the kitchen cupboards.

Generally quarantine gives you time to do things you have been putting off!

Hector asked to go out for the first time today. Luckily he was distracted by some colouring but who knows how long that will last.

Today’s major challenge has been food delivery. We are not allowed to have delivery people come to our door. Instead they are supposed to put it on a shelf for our building manager to deliver. For days this system has been going wrong. We get frequent calls in chinese asking where to put the food. Unfortunately we understand enough to listen but not to reply! When food arrives it is cold or lukewarm if we’re lucky. We ordered groceries so we could cook instead of ordering takeout but they didn’t arrive. Our manager even changed our address but we still didn’t get our dinner until at least an hour late. She has kindly offered to let us use her phone number for the remainder of our quarantine. Our lovely colleague Yifang also helped us out by bringing us food that she had cooked herself.. You are completely reliant on the kindness of your community in this situation but there are always people willing to help. We are really well supported by our colleague Jasmine in HR who will always come to our defence when things are going wrong.

Since writing yesterday I am relieved to see that the UK has started introducing social distancing. The biggest problem with these measures is that as it is advice many companies cannot claim any compensation as they are choosing to close. It is hard to see how many small businesses will survive in this climate. As I write this Laura Ashley has gone into administration. I have the news on with the hope that there might be some helpful financial policies to those businesses but I’m not holding my breath. On the plus side it’s a step in the right direction. My belief is that things will get worse forcing further measures which I hope won’t be too late.

To end on a lighter note this was sent to me in a WeChat group and is too true to not be reposted. Stay safe!

My first post and a bit of a rant I fear. Sorry if this offends anyone. If you disagree I can only say I write from the point of view of someone whose life was affected by the virus from the beginning. I hope I’m wrong about some of this.

Day 2 of quarantine began pretty early for me. I went to bed with jetlag about 8pm and ended up waking up around midnight. I tried several times to get back to sleep but too much on my mind. Somehow running on 4 hours of sleep but surviving.

Today we’ve been kept pretty busy with streaming and catching up on work. We have also been pleasantly surprised at how Hector is coping. He has been content to play and hasn’t asked to go out yet. Although after typing this I did notice that Tom’s shoes had appeared! His time in Canada seems to have mellowed him somewhat! This is all good when we are trying to work and look after him at the same time.

But the main reason I decided to write this blog today was to put down my thoughts about the virus. We managed to avoid quarantine until this week. Yes quarantine is hard and rather extreme but I also support it. China actually has the virus under control which is something many media outlets seem to prefer to ignore. I actually read an article in the guardian today citing examples of successful lockdowns and missing out China. I know many expats who feel safe here and did even during the worst time. I feel safer here than I did in Canada. But for some reason China is constantly held to a standard that noone else is. They are widely suspected of having inaccurate numbers. But so does the US due to a lack of testing kits. So does the UK as they are no longer recording minor cases and they don’t even test some people with symptoms as they have no relevant travel history! The US bans those with Chinese passports not those who have been in China within 14 days. Right now China is our home and all of this is hurtful. The measures may be authoritarian but they have done more than many countries to protect their workers. Including protecting full pay during the lockdown.

Which brings me to my country. I am scared for my family and friends right now. I realise that shutting schools has a cost. One that was easier to deal with in China due to the bigger role played by grandparents in childcare. But all other countries seem to find a way to deal with this. I do not think it’s possible to slow the spread of the virus without shutting the schools down. The plan to only isolate the elderly and vulnerable seems to be very misguided. It will not stop the spread of the virus but Boris seems willing to let many die. Even those who would have survived will not if the number of infected gets too high. Wuhan knows this. Italy knows this. Boris thinks he knows better. Even if social distancing is introduced how can people survive on sick pay or nothing in the case of the self-employed? This will lead to many not following official advice as they have a family to support. Not to mention that only isolating if you are sick ignores the fact that you can be infectious without symptoms.

I am thinking of you all in the UK. Stay strong, wash your hands correctly for 20 seconds and don’t go out if you can avoid it.

Hi everyone, believe it or not I actually have a bunch of drafted blog posts concerning our travels recently. However, I thought people would be more immediately interested in the 14 day quarantine period me and the family are going through in China.

As most of you are no doubt aware Coronavirus or Covid19 has become all the rage lately. The upsurge of cases in China began a week after we had started a trip to Vietnam/Cambodia. Our school went into closed-mode and the holidays were extended. Then they were extended again….and then again. Infact the holidays are still going now! Of course this hasn’t really been an ongoing holiday as students have had online classes and me and Katy have had to teach said online classes. Probably could write a whole blog post about that as well, but actually lets just focus on what’s going on at the moment.

We returned to Hangzhou from Canada after being away for nearly 2 months. As we were arriving from a country with a rising number of cases we found ourselves given a yellow sticker which designates that we must be quarantined at home (thankfully) for 14 days. This ain’t any weak-sauce Italian or American self-isolation either. We are not allowed to leave our apartment room, not even to put out garbage. Still it seems better than spending 2 weeks in a hotel room, which was the alternative. Although atleast our food would be easier to get as the hotel would be serving three meals a day. As it stands we are going to have to survive off of Meituan and other delivery apps and the good will of our building supervisor.

We left Toronto at 4:25pm and arrived in Hangzhou at 5:50pm, the following day. Time changes are fun, but all in all we were in the air for just over 13 hours. What came next was expected but no less un-fun. We had to go through multiple checks, get a yellow sticker applied to our passport, no doubt dissapoint the school driver sent to collect us (He couldn’t due to yellow sticker). We were through security and with our bags just before 10pm. We then entered a waiting room for our province which, was…well it was a room. You could wait in. Well actually it was a section of airport cordoned off by plastic walls. This meant no water, or toliets…unless of course you nagged one of the no doubt over-worked workers in the hazmat suits. They let me out to use a toilet temporarily.

At around midnight a bus arrived to take us to our province or rather a rather central part of the province. At this point it was about 2:30 am. The holding area was a parking lot with a Road and Transport office located across from it. Checking Baidu maps it was effectively in the middle of nowhere. Here we were checked again, screened and then sent to wait for a bus to take us to our city. Around 4:00am we arrived in Hangzhou where we stopped infront of one of the dreaded Hotel Quarantines. These are actually just normal hotels, with decent accommodation and where you end up if you don’t have a permanent residence particularly close to the airport you landed in. It would have sucked to be in one, but it would probably have been bearable if not for Hector. We really wanted to get home to where his toys were and where he’d have at least a few rooms to run around in as our apartment has about…hrm lets see….3 bedrooms, living room, dining room, two bathrooms….so about 5 more rooms than an average hotel in China? We still are not sure how he is going to cope with being isolated in here for so long.

Finally after about 10 hours of screening, transferring, waiting for buses, riding buses. We arrived home at 4:45am. to find…very rotten bananas…damnit. Today hasn’t been particularly exciting. Hangzhou has been in lock down in some shape or form for nearly two months now, so not much new construction has been evident. One very notable change is how far we can see from our 31st window. We’ve had clear days before, but nothing like this. You can see multiple layers of mountains and everything is so incredibly…not hazy. Goes to show how clean and beautiful this city could be in a few years if the Hangzhou government keeps pushing to introduce more and more public transport and more and more electric vehicles. I will be sure to take some pictures tomorrow morning when the suns out again and post them on day two of the blog.

So what else happened on Day One hrmmm…Katy and Hector went to sleep, so did I for about 4 hours. Woke up and decided to get grocery shopping done and figure out how we get groceries up here. Which was successful. It did get me wondering how other countries are going to handle long term quarantine if delivery isn’t so much an option.

In the evening we ordered Pizza but something went wrong and it ended up being delivered to the wrong building. When it finally arrived it was cold so naturally I put it into the oven. Which I had forgot how to operate properly. This was the result:

It tasted just a about as bad as it looked. That’s about all I’ve got to post for today. Check back tomorrow for the next update!

So up till now this blog has primarily focused on me and my families adventures through China. It’s also terribly behind as I try to catch up to the present moment (Early October) considering the last post was about events which occurred in the middle of July! But I’m confident that slowly but surely we’ll get caught up.

So now then, let’s talk about work. Or rather me and Katy’s introduction to our new workplace. Basis International Hangzhou!

Now when I started planning out this blog I was a bit concerned, you know that I couldn’t very well go online and rant about how horrible the school is and how terrible it is to be working in China. I mean. Other than that just being flat out rude, it’s also not super entertaining to read and oh-yeah I could face some discipline for going so far out of line. Or so people told me. I suppose I ought to at this point state how happy I am to not actually have anything to complain about. It will make writing this blog a lot easier, though it will also perhaps make it a bit dull.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After we returned to Hangzhou we spent a single day in an apartment before we finally got into our new home.

Up here. On the 31st floor.

It’s definitely not got quite the same floor space as our semi-detached townhouse back in the UK. But it’s actually pretty darn similar. Living/Dining room is about the same size if not a bit wider. Our guest room and Hector’s room are considerably large…though Hector’s room does have the annoyance of having a big fuck off bed in it.

I disassembled it partially then flipped it up so that Hector could have a bit more room in his room. Our bedroom is about 40% larger than our old one and we even got an en-suite bathroom. With decidedly, no bath. Which is unfortunate. I am told.

The apartment came fully furnished including one very intensely large television and a lot of furniture we can live in terror over possibly damaging/ruining. But I suppose that’s a small cost for having a rent-free apartment. There are definite downsides to living on the 31st floor; the elevator certainly takes awhile to get to you and when it does you often find your descent slowed/completely stopped by a few people. That said there is something incredibly romantic and frankly, just really really cool about living so far up in the sky. Being able to look out your window and get a great wide-screen look at the world around you is fantastic.

As apart of our WELCOME TO CHINA WEEK put on by the school, we took a trip to Ikea. It may have been obvious that me and Katy were quite new to this whole expat-teacher life style. We spent more than any of the other teachers. As a bonus we were given by the school about 8000 GBP (10,000-ish Dollars) to relocate our stuff to China. We spent about 700 GBP of that on just packing up boxes (As covered in a previous post) we figured we may as well buy new stuff when we got here. And we did. Katy and I each got a desk, we bought a few cabinets, got Hector a bed, the list was quite enormous and I think we actually lost a few things in the process (Someone stole our Ikea Lamp 😦 ) After much Alan-Key wielding our apartment was starting to feel like a strange nightmare-mirror version of our home back in Spalding. I mean this of course in the nicest way possible. Still remarkably, because all IKEA is actually built in China, we only managed to spend just under 1000 GBP (1200 Dollars) outfitting our home. So we’ll just be pocketing the rest of the relocation allowance…albeit after it’s been taxed.

It was around this time that we met two friendly co-workers. Rob and Robin. Other than having adorably (Disgustingly adorable) similar names, these two proved to be particularly friendly. Perhaps more important for my own ego, they were incredibly complimentary of how settled in/aware of my surroundings I was. In the few weeks we had been in China more than the other teachers (Who all arrived about 2 weeks after us) I had managed to develop a believable confidence dripping front. I had also worked out where the best micro-bars were. So that won me some points I think. Both were teaching in India before coming to China and consequently are very good at telling us how much better china compared to it’s most comparable rival. Basically, if “You think China’s polluted? SHUT UP! You go outside in Delhi, you got cancer. Instant cancer!” Perhaps an exaggeration but, it does make you feel better about yourself. Before you suddenly feel horrible upon realising that the abject suffering of others is raising your own sense of self-worth.

Rob (Or Bob as Robin calls him, I assume so she can differentiate him from her own name more readily) is an Irishman who has…well lets be honest. Not lived in Ireland for a very long time. He teaches Science to a ghastly large number of students…although it is considerably less than what he’d face if he were back in Ireland (I think it’s about 150 students? Which sounds like a lot till you comprehend that during my last year of teaching in the UK I had 238 students…which is still a lighter student load than the less ‘Major’ subjects like History or my wife’s subject Latin.). That said I’m now teaching 84 students. But more on work-life stuff later. Rob has a habit of being overly complimentary whilst also wielding a shockingly crass sense of humour. It’s an interesting combination. We run into each other often at work and in meetings, if just because he teachers 66% of my students. He is a self professed nerd and veteran Dungeons and Dragons player and is insistent that I try and play Risk. I will the moment he buys a copy, cause I ain’t buying Risk.

Robin, his wife, is originally from the United States. It’s not entirely clear how he met her, but that’s probably because I’ve never actually bothered to ask. Robin teaches the lower school, that is to say, Grade 2. Consequently we don’t see much of each other at work, compared to me and Rob. That said we have hung out outside of work and shes’ been a great friend to Katy. Katy as she herself will readily admit (But perhaps not appreciate me broadcasting onto this blog) sometimes struggles to kick start new friendships. Whilst I’m able to strike up a conversation with complete strangers (Preferably if there is alcohol on hand), Katy is not so likely to do that…or even put herself into that situation. Luckily Robin has been quite eager to invite Katy out and to establish something of a work-girl-friend circle. This circle includes people like Jane.

Jane teaches Grade 2 at Basis as well. (I think…I mean i assume so) She’s originally from the Philippines but is functionally American like most of the staff at the school. She has the delightful habit however of uttering random basic Japanese phrases which anyone whose watched enough anime should recognize immediately. This is chiefly because she has spent the last better part of a decade living and teaching in Japan. She is a constant source of imported Kit-Kat’s and her husband Ernie is a welcome addition to me and Katy’s fledgling board-gaming clique…which I suppose I’ll need to write about later.

So! In the early days we met the above people amongst others, perhaps most notably Bill Nye the Science Guy’s nephew Brian. Something which really struck both of us was the fact that none of our co-workers seemed to be…jerks…or stand-offish. Or just perpetually in a bad mood, something you kind of come to expect with teaching professionals. We were also struck by how thoughtful and kind the administration team here at Basis are. I’ve grown used to the cartoonish buffoonery of aggressive but utterly ineffective middle-leaders and administrators whom seem to inexplicably rise up the ‘Teacher Corporate Ladder’ (The very concept of which is absurd and yet does exist.) I’d grown used to having your managers behave functionally like odd lizard people deeply invested in Microsoft Office Software and minimally interested in anything else, co-workers/students included. To be honest it has put me a bit on edge. Here we were half way around the world, in a school which costs A LOT OF MONEY for parents to send there kids to. Yet, the staff were acting super empathetic and nice. I was quite frankly expecting at any moment for a shoe to drop. It still hasn’t 3 months in.

So some basics about BASIS Hangzhou.

Basis is a private school based out of the United States. They have a few dozen schools across the USA and in the last few years they’ve made a big push to open up international schools in China. So what is an international school you ask? What you didn’t ask that? Well too bad, I’m going to tell you anyway. I mean, like if you don’t want to hear my explanation, that’s fine. Go to the next paragraph. I won’t notice, I mean…I didn’t code this web-page to hack into your web-cam. Nor did I design an entire program meant to record the shifting of your eyeballs to keep track of both your reading speed and interest in the written material. That would be super crazy and creepy…so go ahead, if you think you know what an international school is, just skip to the next paragraph. Right so you are still reading. An International School is technically a school made for the children of people who are working internationally. Functionally speaking they tend to be full of Ambassadors kids, Army Brats and the children of very wealthy employee’s of conglomerates who have relocated an entire family for whatever reason. In short. They tend to be very expensive because the people sending their kids to them aren’t actually paying the expenses. Now in China…things are a bit different. Here International means foreign children but about 95% of the students I teach identify as Chinese. Weird right? How is this possible? The answer is simple. Money is awesome! As are super loose citizenship rights. Every single student we teach has a passport to a country other than China. Even if that passport was effectively bought. A huge proportion of our students are technically African. It’s a peculiar loop-hole, but when the fee’s for sending your kid to this school equal my yearly salary in the UK. It is not particularly surprising that it exists.

One fascinating aspect of BASIS schools is that they teach a curriculum which is 2 years more advanced than what you’d expect students to be doing. In other words; Grade 5 are doing Grade 7 work. Grade 10 are doing Grade 12 work and Grade 12….Grade 12 is going overseas to prep schools and/or doing a quasi thesis project. This is a bit daunting, but I’ve always believed that there is no such thing as stupid people, just lazy people. I’ve always believed that almost anyone (with the exception of the intellectually disabled) can become knowledgeable/intelligent. I don’t really buy into the whole ‘naturally talented’ argument. Though I’m probably being overly romantic espousing this point of view. So logically speaking making kids do work which is intrinsically difficult is a great way to stretch them. This starts to become more tricky fall when the majority of your students speak English as a second language and at times, are not particularly skilled with it.

The students at Basis Hangzhou vary wildly in regards to their spoken English skills and even those who sound fluent may not be able to present that in their writing. It’s fine really, the school didn’t hide this from us, the Principle; Alan Wilkinson made it very explicit during this interview with me and Katy. It can make teaching tricky at times though. The English learners never want to look silly/ignorant in front of their friends. So if they don’t understand something they are very hesitant to make you aware of this. Asking “Does everyone understand.” will just net you a lot of nodding heads. So this part of teaching at Basis can be difficult. They also really care about data, like every time you set a homework task, or do a test or even do an in class activity they ask that you log it into their tracking system. Something which has proven to be actually quite easy and useful. I was always terrible at keeping track of my students data before hand.

So this will obviously be a growing/developing topic as my experience over here develops. But for now lets just consider some factual details which me and Katy have both found to be quite an improvement.

Teaching Time in the UK: 22 Hours per week.

Teaching Time in China: 16 Hours per week

Class Load in UK as of 2018-2019: 9

Class Load in China: 4

Total Students UK: 238

Total Student China: 81

Free Periods Per Week in the UK: 4

Free Periods Per Week in China: 15.

Holidays in the UK: 13 weeks off

Holidays in China: 15 weeks off

Pay After Taxes in the UK (For Tom atleast): 1380 GBP

Pay After Taxes in China: 3000 GBP

Annoying/Difficult Students per group in the UK: 3-12

Annoying/Difficult Students per group in China: 0.75 (Averaged out)

Managers Telling Tom He’s Doing it Wrong in the UK: 3

Managers in China: 0

Average Time Spent on the Weekend Marking/Planning in the UK: 5-8

Average Time Spent on the Weekend Marking/Planning in China: 2-3 Hours. Admittedly this is largely due to me not using my free periods well enough and going home the moment the bell rings.

Teacher Training in the UK: Come into work 2 days before school starts up. Get a baked potatoe.

Teacher Training with Basis: Spend 5 nights in a 5 star hotel on the beach. Spend 4 hours a day being briefed trained. The rest being at a resort.

Maybe the dread of being overseas hasn’t set in yet, but so far everything is seeming to be a pretty big step up for me and Katy.

I’m just going to put a pin in it here though, this post has really dragged out as it is a very large and complicated topic to cover. Look forward to seeing my next post being quite the time jump ahead from July 2019 to quite likely August or September. Next post will either be about Beer in China and/or me and Katy’s little get away trips that we’ve taken since we’ve arrived here. (There has been 43…heck hey can I make a poll on this?

I CAN AWESOME!

Shanghai Disneyland. Often when I mention it to people you get one of two reactions:

1. There’s a Disneyland in Shanghai!?!
2. Oh that’s nice. Did you get the annual pass?

There is indeed a Disneyland in Shanghai. And quite a robust one as well. Now I may have only ever actually been to two Disney parks (Quite a long time ago as well actually, last time I stayed at a Disney park I was 12.) but as a possible consequence of my brother in law and my own youtube video addiction, I’ve become something of an expert in regards to the Disney parks. For anyone not in the know, this may seem strange. How and/or why would you be obsessed with a theme park based around a Cartoon mouse? Well for me, it’s the details and imagination that has always gone into these parks. They are theme parks in the purest sense, engineered (Or is that imagineered?) escapism to the greatest degree. A few fun facts which I feel convey this:

• The parks ground shifts slightly so that you can never see other ‘lands’. For instance, if your in Tomorrow Land, you can’t get clear view of Thunder Mountain or Toy Story land.
• Forced perspective. buildings are designed and positioned to create an artificial sense of size/space.
• Music-shifts. The park has a very very extensive sound track which shifts the second you walk into a different ‘land’. The shift is near instant thanks to clever positioning of speakers which themselves are often hidden in bushes.
• Themed uniforms. Employee’s wear costumes/outfits themed to each land.
• The parks are pretty much indestructible. Disney World has been hit by hurricanes with minimal damage…what the hell is that castle made of!!?

Those are just a few of the weird little things the Walt Disney Corporation does with there parks to create an other-worldliness to them. There’s also a ton of weird urban myths tied to the Disney Parks. So yeah, I’ve got a mild obsession with these strange, ludicrously expensive theme parks. My wife Katy has a similar obsession though I think it’s more tied to a love for the films (Which I also share). Thus we have decided to spend an awful lot of our now grossly inflated salaries visiting as many Disney Parks as conceivable this year.

Shanghai

Tokyo

Hong Kong

Orlando.

We got the ball rolling by visiting Shanghai Disneyland near the end of our travels across China. It was pretty great! Though I think Hector enjoyed the park just outside of the park than most anything else!

Maybe it was just too much time spent being dragged to museums and up and down mountains, because Hector was absolutely jubilant when he saw other small children running up and down slides.

We arrived in Shanghai from Xi’an and made out way haphazardly to Shanghai Disneyland which is on the complete other side of the city. Shanghai Disney is the newest of the parks having just opened a little over 2 years ago. Unfortunately unlike other Disney parks located in mega-cities, this one isn’t really well linked to the metro system. I mean you can totally get there by subway, it just takes like 95 minutes from the airport.

First thing we did was check in at our somewhat dodgy airbnb and then hit up ‘Downtown Disney’ a little shopping/eating area just outside of the park proper. It’s a bit like a weaker version of Pleasure Island in Florida, still it was a nice change of pace.

They do have an absurdly large Disney Store, the above image shoes 1/4th of the total store. Downtown Disney also has a few dozen restaurants , including some big american brands like. The Cheesecake Factory. A place I would never have any interest in going to. At all…but then I ate Chinese food for 3 weeks straight and…well…

They had giant chicken Parmi. I…I could not say no to the giant Chicken Parmesan. I mean, the table service was impressive, the food was very generous and it’s an up market american brand some how functioning in China. The meal for us 3 came to 40 GBP. Considering we got beer as well, I think we did pretty well.

Perhaps that’s the most jarring thing about Shanghai Disney. Everything is so expensive. But it’s also…just not? That’s one of the weird things about living in China. You can get an entire meal at a cheap place for about 1.50 GBP (13 RMB). Or you can go to a fancier place and pay 120 RMB! (13 GBP) So your left wondering, was it worth spending nearly 10 times the amount of money? Can you really feel ripped off when you would have spent the same or more in the UK or Canada? I’m not so sure yet…sorry for the Tom aside, lets get back on topic!

So the next day we eagerly got in line to enter the park. Now, that was harrowing. Shanghai Disney is an amazing place and I had heard rumours that it had the rudest crowds. So I was prepared for typical line jumping and madness. It…wasn’t as bad as I had expected, still wasn’t great though. The line to get in was filled with mothers shoving their 6 yearold children forward like a wedge, penetrating the line further and further. Other than that, though it wasn’t so bad. Once we were actually in the park people completely stopped jumping the lines!

One thing you may notice/may not notice is that Shanghai Disneyland is huge compared to California or Paris’ Disneyland. It’s also got a loooot of green space around it. This is because Disney intends to expand/grow the park exponentially. At the moment it is kind of nice to have so much space/no real sense of over compactness which I hear you get at some of the other parks. Right now they’re building a Zootopia Land expansion. You know Zootopia? That movie which everyone wont’ stop talking about…

What no you don’t? Well that’s probably because your not Chinese. In China Zootopia made more money than any other animated film ever. It’s….very popular here. In fact I bring it up because one of the most interesting aspects of Shanghai Disneyland is what the park has chosen to focus on.

Hong Kong and Tokyo Disney were made for the local but also the foreign market. Shanghai Disney was built because they had worked out that about 400 million people could get to it in 2-3 hours. It’s not made for foreigners, no, it’s made for the Chinese. Thing is the Chinese government put a limit on how many foreign films could be released in China for years. This mean that the vast majority of Disney animated films Pre-2000’s never made it out here. The Disney Princess brand has made inroads, but for the most part, people don’t know who the hell Dumbo the elepant, or Pete’s dragon is. They don’t know what a Mary Poppins is or Donald Duck. They aren’t super familiar with the Tiki Room or any of the archtypical Disneyland attractions. So instead, the park was built around what they knew the Chinese market would recognise. Thus…

Pirates of the Caribbean Land!

It’s actually really cool. But yeah, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is very popular in China. So in addition to Adventure Land you have an entire Tortuga lookalike town. It’s pretty great.

They got awesome Turkey Wings. (Not legs but…ah well).

• 

Hector tried to drive a boat here. It didn’t work out obviously. As he has no nautical skills what so ever. The Pirates land has 3 rides, a show and more importantly, a lot of atmosphere. Cast Members (The fancy work they have for employee at Disney Parks) wander about dressed up like pirates and occasionally engage in sword fights in the street. It’s great.

Similarly Tomorrow Land has no space mountain. It has Tron. Probably the most bad ass roller coaster I’ve ever been on in a Disney Park. It also has a lot of Marvel superheroes.

The Tron Light Cycle ride is a bit like Space Mountain. Except it’s themed really well and you ride a quasi-motorcycle through a dark and neon lit wonderland. I went on this no less than 5 times…mostly because me and Katy worked out the best Shanghai Disney Hack. Will tell you later.

Overall the park was endearing and definitely took two days to fully enjoy. A lot of the standard ‘Disney’ lands have extensions to them. Adventure Land has pirates, Tomorrow Land has Marvel and Tron, Magic Kingdom has the Crystal Grotto, and there’s even a 100 Acre wood area because Chinese people really really love Winnie the Pooh.

Hector wasn’t too into Pooh.

The results are a Disney Park which definitely feels a lot more ‘recent’/new. On the downside however you have a lot less of the typical Disney rides you’d expect. There is no Small World After All (THANK GOD), no Jungle Cruise, no Haunted Mansion, No Hall of American Presidents, and no Main Street USA. Then again, I suppose if that’s what your after and you don’t live in China…why would you come all this way?

Now for the big Hack. So the fireworks are nice, though you can’t really see them as the crowds stand up and hold their phones up in the air making it quite difficult to actually see anything.

Me and Katy grew rather frustrated very quickly and found ourselves stomping away from the fireworks show and into the rest of the park and found the wait times for rides which you can always check on the Disneyland Park App (Super handy) had dropped from 50 – 110 minutes to about 1-5 minutes. That’s right. The moment the fireworks start up (At about 7:45pm) the crowds gather around the castle and utterly abandon the rides. After the show ends around 8:30 people just walk straight out of the park. This is despite the fact that Shanghai Disneyland at this time of the year is open till 10:00 pm. So want to go on all of the awesome but far too long lines rides? Don’t bother with fast passes-just wait till the final 2 hours of the park being open and go on all the rides! Me and Katy went on Tron over and over again.

Oh and one last thing, they do have this great policy for visitors with Hectors (I mean babies) if you line up together they let one person wander off with the child + a skip the line pass. When the person not baby sitting finishes standing in the line and going on the ride their partner can immediately go straight onto the ride. This worked out pretty well as it meant we didn’t need to keep Hector in the line (Screaming) and the person looking after Hector could spend an hour wandering around the park, checking out shops and stuff. Pretty good trade off I thought!

With Disney Shanghai done, me and Katy made our way back to Hangzhou. We didn’t get the season/annual pass in the end. We decided that whilst it would only require us visiting 4 more times to make us break even, we would rather use some of that money to visit ALL the other PARKS!

So next up. Hong Kong Disney-wait no…

Next up Hangzhou and getting used to Basis…

See below a gallery of amusing images from Disneyland Shanghai. Think we didn’t take too many photos as we had thought we’d be back again. We probably will.

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Of the above four locations you may be familiar with one, or maybe even two, if you have a passing interest in Chinese History however you should be fairly familiar with these three cities and one particularly impressive mountain. Firstly Luoyang, Xi’an and Nanjing all hold the lofty title of Ancient Capital. Primarily because at different times over the past 3500 years each has been the seat of centralised Chinese Governmental power. (The fourth ancient Capital is Beijing , though I am not convinced that the term ancient is entirely applicable there. Although you will find that the Chinese have a funny habit of using the word Ancient for things which are over 200 years old…maybe it’s just a bad translation of ‘Old Historic Thing’.

Anywho after an hour and a half bullet train ride we arrived in Nanjing. In retrospect I probably should have planned less cities and more time to visit each as all we really managed to see in Nanjing was the rather impressive National History Museum. We did however get a great chance to acclimatise the different climate, weather and culture of China. People often speak of culture shock and I suppose we had read enough about what to expect to not be too overwhelmed. That said, the constant spitting on the ground and into garbage bins is rather unsavoury. It was also at this point we realised that we had really brought too much luggage with us as we were now hauling. Three suitcases, a stroller, 4 backpacks and a pop up tent. The stroller helped us carry quite a lot of the stuff, but we were heavily reliant upon museums/attractions having a luggage drop off point.

In Nanjing we managed to visit the National History Museum, wherein Hector screamed. A lot. So that kind of ruined it. Next we attempted to climb up Purple Mountain Scenic area to visit the mausoleum of Sun Yat-Sen. Sun Yat-Sen is considered to be the father of modern China by both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (China and Taiwan respectively) and his burial place is quite impressive looking.

Which is hilarious if just because the man lived a fairly modest life and actively asked for the still quite young Chinese Republican Government to not build statues or monuments to him…oops. This was a bit of a mad adventure as we couldn’t yet order a DiDi (The uber of China) and we only had a loose understanding of how the buses worked. So we ended up effectively begging a cab to take us there. He did not. He took us to a very nice McDonalds wherein’ I discovered that Mcdonalds in China whilst not costing much more than it does in the UK is shockingly only a bit cheaper than eating at Pizza Hut.

EXHIBIT A: A Big Mac Meal 60 RMB. (6 GBP)

EXHIBIT B: A Large Stuffed Crust Pepperoni Pizza 75 RMB (7.50 GBP)Still the break gave us the energy we needed to tackle the long hike up Purple Mountain to visit Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum. One thing I have begun to notice in China is the tendency for anything culturally significant/touristy to have a long maze of vendors, souvenir shops and restaurants leading up to it.

I suppose this is true of any tourist site anywhere, but the ones here really feel labyrinthine. Furthermore, most sell the exact same stuff so I’m not really sure how they manage to all stay in business. After a long hike up we found uh…that you needed to book your tickets in advance. So we couldn’t go in…damnit.

That’s okay though because we were about to fix our luggage problem and have far, far worse things happen than not getting into a national monument.

On the train ride between Nanjing and Luoyang, at some point my suitcase was either stolen or accidentally collected. Inside of it was nearly 5000 RMB (500 GBP) my laptop, tablet, chromebook chargers, all of the clothing I was currently not wearing, and a variety of other personal effects. Thus the following morning we went shopping at a very large and very empty shopping centre. Another funny thing about malls in China. Most sort of suck. Not because they’re messy, or full of shut stores but because well…they’re full of expensive boutiques with over priced clothing. Fun fact, most Chinese people now actually just buy things on their phones. Groceries, clothing, food, toys, etc. So shopping malls have taken on a different life. They’re a place you go to eat (as they often do have very nice restaurants ranging from cheap to expensive. ) and more importantly, be seen…I think? I can’t quite work it out. Most are 3-7 floors high with lots and lots of designer stores but no one ever seems to actually buy anything.

I’ll need to look more into this. So after much hassle I bought some over priced T-Shirts and shorts and resumed adventuring!

Luoyang is the most ancient of cities featuring the ruins of tombs and palaces from multiple dynasties which made the city their home. Once again however we didn’t really have the time to see all of that, so instead we ended up defaulting for the two biggest sites just outside of the city. Longmen Grottoes and Song Shan.

Song Shan is a towering monolith of lime stone and granite. Whilst maybe not your arch-typical Chinese mountain, it does cut an impressive profile of solid uncovered white stone. It’s also where Kungfu Monks come from. Shaolin monks built their monastery at the foot and up along the side of this mount and developed martial arts practices which TODAY YOU TOO CAN ENJOY! YES REALLY, YOU TOO CAN JOIN THE HUNDREDS OF FOREIGNERS WHO COME HERE DAILY TO SHAVE THEIR HEADS AND BECOME MONKS! For like…1-4 weeks. Maybe I’m too stuck up, but I don’t really get this. I mean it makes the Shaolin a ton of cash for sure, but it kinda feels like it cheapens the whole monastic life choice thing. I mean, the compound for foreigners learning Kungfu is actually 3 times the size of the actual temple (As seen on Baidu maps).

Still the temple is quite beautiful and it was here Hector’s celebrity status became evident. In Hangzhou and even in Nanjing I imagine the locals see foreigners often enough that it barely warrants a second look. But deeper into China and in a Tier 3 city like Luoyang…me and Katy got a lot of looks, Hector being an even rarer commodity (A White Toddler) had crowds forming around him if we dared to stop walking for a few moments.

Luckily Hector really enjoyed the attention and got into the habit of actively waving at strangers, I think he just likes the attention.

We took a cable car up Song Shan under the pretense that it would make the hike easier. Yeah no. Hector’s backpack carrier helped, but it was still a lot of weight and the cable car took you only a bit more than half of the way up. After about 4 miles of walking we decided to turn back and head down. Officially because we didn’t want to keep our taxi waiting, in actuality I think we were just tired.

The next day we went to Longmen Grottoes. One of the largest Buddhist sites still standing in China, it was largely built up during the Tang Dynasty (About 1300 years ago). Facing a river the temple complex looks to be made up of thousands of shallow caves. Of course these caves were in fact hand carved by artisans, often with some of the natural stone being carved out into monolithic Buddhist sculptures. The largest and most famous is perhaps modelled after the one and only female Emperor Wu Zetian.

The next day we were off again, this time with me paying extra close attention to our suitcases as we travelled by train to Xi’an. Originally I had wanted to spend half of the travelling day going up Hua Shan (another mountain along the way) buuut yeah. That didn’t happen. Xi’an is perhaps the most famous Chinese City in the West, perhaps not for itself but rather what it has within the city limit. The Terracotta Army. Xi’an itself is definitely worth spending a few days in. It’s a truly ancient city still sporting impressive City Walls which have encircled the city (In various states of repair/disrepair) for 2,000 years. It was also a major pit stop for the silk road and consequently during the Tang dynasty became a hot bed for immigrants/foreigners. Today the city still sports a sizeable Muslim quarter in the old city. (It’s actually more like a third of the old city, which itself is a 3 by 4 mile block.) It was here we discovered something I had only vaguely heard of.

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Chinese-Muslim food. It’s totally a thing and one of the few subsets of food you can seemingly find all over China. One thing Katy had complained about is the lack of ‘variety’, to which you might say. “Chinese food is incredibly diverse!” Which it is. I think it’s more so we are used to utterly different types of food in the UK/Canada. Curry, Chinese Food, Italian Food, Greek Food, Mexican Food, Caribbean Food, just to name a few. We are spoiled for choice. In China the most common alternatives to ‘Chinese food’ are American food (See expat bars/Mcdonalds/KFC/Dairy Queen) and Chinese-Muslim food. Chinese Muslim food is actually pretty good. Tends to involve big huge noodles, lamb/beef and a lot of mild spices.

Anyway back in Xi’an, we found an ATM to get cash out (Yay) and visited the Big Bell Tower and the Big Drum Tower!

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I rented a bicycle and road up and down along the City Walls and finally we got up stupidly early (5am) to visit the Terracotta Warriors. This was a good plan. The gates opened at 7am and we more or less sprinted to the excavation pit which they are still in. We managed to get a good 10-15 minutes looking at them before Hector became too much of a nuisance. It’s a good thing we did as well, as when we came back an hour later the place was nightmarish jam packed with people. They don’t really seem to limit attendance out here.

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By 8am the excavation pits’ viewing platform was 10-15 people deep. The downside to beating the crowds to seeing the warriors was what we faced in the museum. The Terracotta Army has a nice modern museum wherein they store some of the better preserved and impressive figures. Here we attempted to see the bronze chariots. Rather impressive 1:4 scale models of what Qin era prossional chariots looked like. The room, if it didn’t have air ventilation on, would have been a death trap if just because of carbon-monoxide. The hall was utterly filled with people pushing and shoving over one another to get a better look at the sculpture. I ended up Losing Katy and Hector in the humid-nightmare that was the exhibit. One man actually walked over Hectors stroller in his desperate need to view something he’d no doubt seen before.

After visiting the First Emperors enormous and still excavated burial mound we got back on the train again for the longest journey yet, all the way back past Hangzhou and to Shanghai. Shanghai Disneyland!

Thus on the first of July 2019, the Hopkins officially began to make their way to Hangzhou China. The first leg of the flight was about 11 hours long and just about as horrible as I had suspected it would be. The images above do not accurately reflect what was an 8 hour gauntlet of Hector growing progressively more and more enraged whilst me and Katy grew progressively more and more tired. At around the 8 hour mark however Hector finally fell unconscious. A few hours later we arrived in Beijing Aiport to transfer to a shorter domestic flight (2 hours) to Hangzhou.

Which as I suspected was…delayed. You may not know this but somewhere between 40-60% of all flights in China are delayed. This is largely due to the fact that Chinese airspace is fairly limited and with so many planes trying to zip across the same narrow stretches of sky…delays happen. What I had not expected was for us to be delayed after boarding…for an 100 minutes. Given the fact that a bullet train from Beijing to Hangzhou takes just under 6 hours and costs about half to a third as much as a flight…train travel didn’t seem so bad an alternative. Infact I’d generally vouch for it as a superior method of travel within China…but more on that later. One mildly terrifying taxi ride later and we had arrived at out home…well not yet. We arrived at a dodgy hotel! YAY!

The next few days were all about trying to acclimatise to the city or in my case, running around wildly in a somewhat delirious state exploring the city whilst Katy and Hector slept. I was mildly successful. Hangzhou is thankfully, like many modern Chinese cities built on a grid. It’s also oddly enough both very old and very new and also not that old. Let me explain. Hangzhou, compared to other Chinese cities lucky enough to bear the lofty title of ‘Imperial Capital’ (Which it managed to hold for around 130ish years) it is no where near as ancient. It did not get it’s city walls until the 7th century! (A must have for all Chinese cities) which by Canadian/American standards sounds crazy old. Heck a city being 1400 years old would be quite old even by European standards…but in China where you find cities dating back 2300-5000 years…yeah, it’s kind of the little brother to other capital cities. To be fair, until about a hundred years earlier Hangzhou couldn’t exist…because…well…Hangzhou was largely under water.

The Qianjiang River (A fairly impressive ‘world class river’) tears through Hangzhou today as the Thames does London and the Tiber does Rome. Thing is, it used to be a lot larger and most of Hangzhou was under water. It was the redirecting of this river which created the massive tourist attracting West Lake and left a lot more of the city as dry land. Hangzhou prospered expontentially over the years, reaching perhaps it’s zenith in the 13th century when Marco Polo visited. At one point it was actually one of the largest cities in the world dwarfing Shanghai, Rome. Infact between 1500-1850 Hangzhou was somewhere between the 3rd and the 8th most populated city on the planet. Kind of funny that pretty much no one in the West whose neither Chinese or interested in China has ever heard of it! This is likely due to the city falling out of favour during the British occupation. All the work and all the trade shifted to the port cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai and Hangzhou rapidly fell out of favour.

Then Mao died.

Then Mao died and things…changed. For China in a big way and Hangzhou in a…pretty big way too. Shenzen and Guangzhou down in the south and so close to the economic power house of Hong Kong, saw perhaps the most dramatic changes as capitalism overtook communism. Hangzhou however, conveniently located down the river from it’s much larger and more internationally adventurous sister Shanghai…saw a resurgence as well. Things really went into over drive when Alibaba (China’s answer to Amazon) opened it’s doors here at the turn of the 20th century. Now one of the most profitable companies on the planet, Hangzhou has very-very-very quickly transformed in the past decade and a half. You just have to look out of my apartment window to see…construction is happening everywhere. Here’s a somewhat dynamic tourism video for the city!

I managed to visit my new school a bit early and got toured around by Peter, a fellow Canadian whose been working at Basis Hangzhou for the past year. He’s been regarded by his co-workers as the most Canadian Canadian who ever Canadianed. To be fair, if you put the man into a mountie uniform, he’d probably pull it off…not many people can do that you know. Before we came to China we sent out 8 cardboard boxes to Basis. They uh…did not survive.

The boxes had collapsed andour possessions had been smooshed into a big burlap bag. Not great but…well at least we got our stuff here!

So after wandering around the lake briefly and stumbling upon a night market, it was time already for us to get moving on!

As I mentioned before, I am quite sceptical of air travel in China. This is largely due to just how fast their trains can go! All of the major cities (And most of the smaller cities, large towns, significant tourist locations) have high speed rail connecting them. High speed rail trains hit speeds of 220 miles per hour. That’s a little more than a third the speed of a commercial jet. So definitely inherently slower but lets consider a few others things…

Arrival at the travel location:

Airport: You are expected to arrive about 2 hours early to check in luggage/get through security. (3-4 hours if your my parents).

Train: You get your tickets printed off and take luggage onto the train. Arrive 20 minutes before.

The Journey and Arrival

Plane: Sit in a chair. Curse the over head light for not letting you up to pee. Upon arrival wait in your seat for 10-20 minutes or stand up and look like an impatient jerk knowing all the while that you are achieving absolutely nothing as getting off the plane 30-80 seconds earlier nets no benefits. Let’s use the Beijing to Hangzhou as a metric and say…2 hours in the air.

Train: Sit in a chair. Walk around. Go to the dining car. Defecate in a restroom when you feel like it. Get wildly drunk off of the alcohol you brought on board. 5 hours and 45 minutes on board.

Collecting Luggage and Getting to your Hotel

Plane: Wait 15-40 minutes for your luggage to come onto the conveyor belt. Why is it taking this long? Who cares, you’re in airport land now, your soul is forfeit and your sense of sanity is waning. Drag luggage through to the taxi area, or the shuttle bus, or if you are lucky the train to get you into the actual city. Because c’mon, who the hell builds an airport in the middle of a city? (Shutup Toronto Island airport. No one likes you anyway). Journey time 25-80 minutes. Total time…40-120 minutes.

Train: Wait for-oh right, you took your luggage on to the train. Guess you should just uh…go. Oh look they built the station inside of the city. Better get across town… Total time: 5-30 minutes.

Total:

Beijing to Hangzhou by train: 6 Hours and 10 minutes to 6 Hours and 35 minutes

Beijing to Hangzhou by plane: 4 hours and 25 minutes – 6 hours (Provided you arrive only 2 hours before flight)

These numbers are largely based upon my own experience and anecdotes. Considering the plane costs double to triple the price of the train…yeah I’m a convert. That said Hector…doesn’t make long train journeys easy…

More on that next time, when we cover the journey to Nanjing and the pitfalls of travelling with a 2 year old…

Hello everyone, I know long time no posting. Well the truth of the matter is that the last month has been incredibly manic. We’ve done a lot of travelling, a lot of train journeys, a lot of flights and a shocking amount of all you can eat buffets. Throw in training and setting up the furniture at a new house and one can certainly say that we haven’t had a lot of time to actually sit down in write. In fact things could probably be best summarised by this image of Hector…in his temporary bath tub.

That said I would really hate to just breeze over and not bother at all at documenting the events of the past 4 weeks. So over the next few days I will be making posts from the past. That is to say, I’ll be doing my best to make up for lost ground by writing blog posts which I would have written over the past month if I were in possession of a time turner. (AKA that horrible plot device JK Rowling came up with to ostensibly ruin her own fictional universe)

So you can look forward to the following posts:

1. Flying to China and arriving in Hangzhou.
2. Going to Nanjing, haphazardly travelling China with a toddler (Perhaps not a great idea)
3. Going to Luoyang and being robbed along the way-also some really awesome caves and haphazardly climbing a mountain with a toddler. (Perhaps ALSO not a great idea).
4. Going to Xi’an and seeing the terracotta army and haphazardly trying to keep a toddler entertained for 2 hours whilst waiting for a fountain show to kick off. (Just a horrible idea)
5. Going to Shanghai Disneyland and making the most out of it whilst being dumped on by rain.
6. Coming back to Hangzhou, meeting colleagues, settling into our new apartment just before being flung into training on the beach.
7. Coming back to Hangzhou (Again) and acclimatizing to the new normal…whilst preparing for work.

Way I figure it, years from now no one will notice that I wrote all these posts weeks after the fact…

So it’s my final week at work this week. This means I am being asked why we’re going to China. A lot. So, as Tom has already answered this question, it seemed only fair for me to do so as well!

One of the most common reactions to the news that we have decided to move to China is to say how brave we are for doing this. I have to say that that is not a word I would use to describe myself (in spite of being sorted into Gryffindor). I certainly could not have imagined that this is where I would be now when I first moved to Spalding five years ago. I have read Tom’s post so I won’t repeat too much of what has already been said, but it is certainly true to say that I am a different person from who I was when I came to be Head of Department at The Grammar. The thought of going to China would never have occurred to me then. But when you are married to Tom you cannot help but catch his endless enthusiasm for experiencing new places. Our honeymoon to Thailand played a major part in opening my eyes to how amazing it is to explore a culture so different from your own.

However, it was not until last summer that the decision was made. Tom had applied for a job in Singapore with Warhammer. Although, he didn’t get this job, this was the point where I realised that I could do this. And that I actually wanted to do this. The only snag, as Tom has mentioned, was my refusal to teach anything that wasn’t Classics. Luckily, Tom is very stubborn and determined and so managed to solve this problem!

The school I work at is very different to the school Tom works at. Coming from a family of musicians, House Music has always been the part of Kings that stood out in my mind the most. To come from a school where a House music competition did not even exist to one where the sixth formers not only directed but even arranged the music was inspirational. Nevertheless, like many teachers I have begun to feel the pressure. Particularly with trying to work full time as a mother. I suddenly understood why so many of my colleagues with children were part time but still felt that it should be possible to do the job and be a mother. Again, like many other teachers I also have to teach a second subject alongside Classics. The school could not have changed any of this but the thought of being in an educational system which might have a better work-life balance began to be very appealing.

I think it’s fair to say that this has still required a lot of soul searching for me. No matter how much of an adventure living in China will be, it still requires leaving my family behind. I don’t think I can explain how much I will miss them.

I am determined that Hector will still have a good relationship with his family even though we will be halfway around the world. We are lucky enough to live in a time when a regular Skype call can be made as well as planning on making regular trips back to the UK, most importantly to begin with with my sister’s wedding this year! Nevertheless, I do really believe that this is the most fantastic opportunity not just for us but for Hector as well, who among other things will no doubt end up speaking better Mandarin than us (my daily Duolingo continues as those who share an office with me well know but Mandarin is a tricky and elusive language to learn)!

Since having Hector I have also found my passion for running. I never thought that I could have run a marathon but now I break into a cold sweat at the thought of an injury. No sooner had I ran my first marathon than I was considering the next one (Great wall of China). Not only that but I have found a second family with the Halmer Harriers who have been the most important part of my running journey. I only hope that I can find a club as amazing as they are in Hangzhou.

I don’t know how this adventure will end or even how long it will be for. But at the risk of sounding cliched I do know that I don’t want to regret not doing this!

Katy