BY Guixi NO.2 Middle School Sherri
My husband Allan and I are from America. We have been living and teaching in the Yingtan area for two and a half years. We have enjoyed our time in Jiangxi Province very much. The people are very open and friendly. We have felt very welcome here ever since we arrived. And we have since made many good friends. They make us feel very comfortable living in China.
We are both Teachers who teach English at Guixi Middle School Number two. We both enjoy our jobs very much because our fellow Teachers are so kind and helpful and the students are so enthusiastic. Our goal is to improve the students’ Oral English. We spend time with them both inside and outside of the classroom in an effort to make them more familiar with us and more comfortable speaking English. They are so much fun! Many of them try very hard to communicate with us and it really makes us feel good to help them improve their English.
I love teaching in China because of the kind and friendly students, the spectacular beauty of the surrounding countryside and my welcoming and supportive colleagues.
Teaching English in China is a very rewarding experience because the students are very clever and hardworking and they are always very excited to have an opportunity to meet Foreign Teachers. They are dedicated to practicing their English in order to share their interests with me and as a result they become my friends as well as my students.
Teaching English in Guixi is a very rewarding experience because the city is so beautiful and the people who work in the stores, banks and other businesses are very helpful and friendly. After teaching in Guixi for two and a half years, these people have become my true friends. And the city is located near to beautiful mountains and countryside that has become famous all over the world as one of China’s national treasures.
Teaching English at Guixi Middle School Number two is a very rewarding experience because my colleagues are so friendly and supportive of my objectives in improving the English of our students. We enjoy spending time together after work to celebrate our friendship with good food and good cheer.
Originally, my husband Allan and I planned on teaching in China for a year but we enjoy teaching and living in China so much that we extended our stay!
The town of Guixi is not very big but it is very nice and has many nice shops and restaurants. It also has a beautiful park along the river. Many times Allan and I will ride our bikes to the park or walk down to the river in the evening to enjoy the nighttime activities. Some of the activities that occur at the river park at night are dancing, music and games. Sometimes we eat some of the delicious street food for dinner.
We enjoy not only being able to live in Guixi but also being able to live at the school. Our apartment has a very nice balcony where I can wave at and talk to the students as they walk by going to their dormitory. Their dormitory is very close to our apartment so the students who live on campus usually become our friends as well as our students. The balcony is a lovely place to drink my morning cup of coffee and observe the birds in the trees. The trees in front of our apartment have grown so much that I can now reach out and touch them. I am sure the rain in Guixi is what makes them grow so well! One of the trees is a fruit tree so I can pick some fruit right from my balcony!
During the Dragon Boat Festival we went to the river to enjoy the celebration and watch the boat race. It was very exciting. We do not have this Festival in America so it was very enjoyable for us to see this new kind of thing. I think it is important that China maintains their cultural heritage by having these wonderful celebrations.
There is also a small mountain park near the river. We often go to this park with our students to hike to the top. There are some very nice trails through this park which allows for one to view the entire city from above. We have some very nice pictures of Guixi from the top of this mountain. There are some picnic tables and a pavilion where you can have a rest and eat your lunch. When we climb the mountain with students we play games in a wooded area and really have a good time! We also go with the students to the park to fly kites. The park along the river is the perfect place for flying kites. The wind along the river carries the kites very high. There is also some exercise equipment near the park. We like to exercise on these pieces of equipment. It is very easy to live a healthy lifestyle in Guixi!
Allan and I also exercise by running on the school track. This is very convenient for us. There is also a jungle gym where Allan can do some arm exercises. Often we will be outside exercising and the students will stop by to say hello. This makes us feel very good and feel very much a part of Guixi and feel at home in China. Many times we enjoy exercising with the students by playing ping pong, basketball or badminton. The playground at Guixi Middle School Number Two is very popular with the students and the locals. Both adults and students like to use the playground for sports, Tai Chi and I see many women do some form of dancing with fans. I don’t know the name of it but it looks very beautiful.
We also enjoy the food in China. The many varieties of fruit and vegetables that are available at the markets also assist us in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And the markets are very near to our apartment. Often we will walk to the market to get our groceries. It is so wonderful that the markets are close and within walking distance. We have come to know many of the shop keepers in town as we shop in many of the stores nearby. We often find out that they are the parents or somehow related to our students! This makes us feel like living in Guixi is like living in a small town! We enjoy this aspect very much since we are from a small town in America.
In Jiangxi Province, the scenery and surrounding countryside is very beautiful. There is a mountain park called Longshu Mountain and it is very famous. The park has the highest rating available for National Parks in China. We have visited this park many times with our friends and colleagues. The mountains are very tall and green. There are many things to see and do in the park. You can even walk along a platform along the tops of the mountains! You can also ride a raft down along the river that runs through the park. We were able to do this with friends. It was very pleasant and it was a very relaxing way to see much of the scenery in the park. We also took some friends who were visiting from America to this park. They were very impressed by the scenery and enjoyed the show that takes place there regarding the tombs. During this show, men scale the mountains and hang by a rope and demonstrate how and where the ancient people of China were entombed in the caves upon their death. This is a very exciting show because the men are hanging on a rope and are very high up in the air. I think they are very brave to do this because I would be too scared to do such a thing! There is also a very nice reconstructed Old Town area in the park where the visitors can walk around, maybe do some shopping and eat lunch. The Old Town is very interesting because it demonstrates what China used to look like many years ago. I enjoyed shopping there because I was able to sample and buy some of the local snacks that are made in the Yingtan area and I purchased a souvenir necklace that contains a piece of rice with my husbands’ name written on one side and my name written on the other side. I don’t know how the artist was able to write our names on such a small piece of rice! There also two temples that we visited while we were there. The temples are built in the Taoist tradition and contain many beautiful statues and decorative features.
There is also another beautiful National Park nearby where Allan and I were able to ride a cable car to the very top of the mountain! The view from the top is spectacular. The countryside surrounding this park is also very beautiful. It is very interesting to go for a ride and see the different farms and the different vegetables that are grown on the farms.
The two parks offer many things to do. We have gone to these parks with friends to go hiking and bike riding. We have so many beautiful pictures of these places!
On the weekends, my husband and I like to go shopping in Yingtan. It has many beautiful shopping malls with a great variety of products and services. It is very convenient to take the bus from our town, Guixi, to Yingtan. We often go to the Walmart store to buy some specialty items that are not available in the regular supermarket. We also like to eat at the restaurants in Yingtan. There are three restaurants from America that we are very familiar with and enjoy the food. The food reminds us of the food in America and after we eat this food we don’t miss our home so much. The three restaurants are KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Many Americans like Allan and I enjoy hamburgers, fried chicken and pizza. So we enjoy eating at these places very much. We also like to eat at the restaurants that offer food from different countries such as Japan, America and Italy. Allan and I have traveled to many countries and we enjoy trying different food items. We can do this in Yingtan without having to travel!
The environment in Guixi is very nice, especially if you like rain! I have never lived anywhere that receives so much rain! But all of this wet weather makes the area surrounding our home very green. The trees and bushes are so green and they have been getting taller every year because of all of the rain. And I enjoy an exciting thunderstorm and in Guixi thunderstorms can last all day!
There is an additional park close to Guixi that we have gone to many times with our friends and colleagues. It has a beautiful lake and some hiking trails and a restaurant that serves very delicious food. We have gone there to enjoy parties with the students also.
Guixi Middles School Number two also has extra school buildings located in the countryside. This is an interesting place to go because there are many animals and a farm where the students can learn about husbandry. Also it has facilities where the students can create craft items such as pottery and paper flowers and learn how to paint on ceramic dishes. The students also practice their culinary skills and make many dishes containing meat, fruit and vegetables. Some of the students are very good at cooking!
Living in Guixi has been very convenient for us in terms of travel. There is a train station in Guixi that is within walking distance and there are two train stations in Yingtan. We can take a very fast bullet train to Shanghai and get there in three hours! It used to take 5 or 6 hours to get there. The bullet trains in China are very nice. They are always on time and they are very clean and go many places in China now. I remember when I was living in the U.S. there was a television program that aired on my local television channel which talked about the construction of the bullet trains. It was very interesting and I thought it would be very exciting to ride in one of these trains. And I remember when we first came to China and I rode the bullet train for the first time in Beijing. I was so excited and took many pictures to send back to my friends and family back home. But now I have ridden on the bullet trains so many times that it is old news!
We have gone many places in China including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Louyang, and Nanjing. These are very exciting cities with many beautiful sights to see. I think someday Yingtan will be considered one of the prime cities to see on one’s tourist route.
Yingtan has a beautiful river and a lovely park along the river where you can walk and see all of the sights. We have gone there with friends a few times and really enjoyed walking along the river. Many people like to go to the river to do some exercises and play musical instruments. So it is very nice to see the people enjoying the beautiful weather in the park.
Many times in the parks in both Yingtan and Guixi you will see people doing a form of Tai Chi or dancing. This is not very common in America but it is a common sight in China. It makes my heart feel good to see the people doing healthy things in the park.
We have spent time in China celebrating many different festivals such as Dragon Boat Festival, Tomb Sweeping Day and Chinese New Year. The Chinese New Year is very exciting because of all of the fireworks that are detonated and the food that is served during this festival is very delicious. We have been able to celebrate with friends and their family by going out and having dinner with them.
I find the celebration of the Chinese New Year very exciting and thrilling since it is not like anything we have in the U.S. The different animal symbols for the different years are very interesting and I discovered that I was born in the year of the horse! Allan was born in the year of the ox.
We are also able to celebrate the holidays that are important for America or Western Culture. Our friends surprised us with a Christmas Tree for the Christmas Holiday. We were able to put up the tree and plug it in! This is the modern way of celebrating Christmas now! The lights were very beautiful and it made us feel very at home to be able to put presents “under the tree”. The lighting of the Christmas tree and putting presents underneath it is the tradition in America, so it was very meaningful to us that our friends would buy a tree for us and help us celebrate a Western holiday in a Western way but while living in Asia.
Many, many people in China are like this. They are very thoughtful in this way. They are always trying to plan activities and offer gifts and activities that will help us to feel at home.
In fact, the Chinese government offered us a free newspaper subscription for a year! I thought this was very nice. We were able to read it because it is in English and we can see all of the news but primarily what are the major events and important issues for China today. China is changing rapidly and I think it is changing in many great ways. I see the changes in the cities, in the countryside and even within the school.
We are very lucky to be expats living in Jiangxi Province because this Province has many schools which employ foreign English Teachers. We have met and enjoyed the company of Teachers from America, Canada, Australia, Italy, England and Scotland. We often meet in a city in Jiangxi Province to celebrate the holidays together or to simply have a party and enjoy one anothers’ company. In the past we have met in Nanchang to celebrate the New Year and the cities of Wannian and Wuyuan to have a party. We like to eat, dance and since we are in China, sing of course! Sometimes we go to KTV but also, one of the expat couples purchased a KTV machine for home use. It is very wonderful that we can choose or download many songs in English. There are many songs in Chinese of course! These songs have very lovely melodies but they are not easy for most of us to sing since we don’t speak Chinese! The Chinese songs do allow for our Chinese born friends to demonstrate what beautiful singing voices they have and it is obvious some have been trained in the classical Chinese Opera style of singing.
Some of the expats that come to China do speak Chinese though. This is a language that is becoming a more popular subject to study in America. Many Universities now offer classes in Mandarin and Cantonese and so sometimes the Foreign Teachers who work here speak both English and some form of Chinese. This of course is very helpful since they can practice their language skills.
In summary, Jiangxi Province and specifically Guixi and the Yingtan area is a very enjoyable place to live and work. The area provides many modern amenities and is a place any person, whether they are from China or abroad, can live an active and healthy lifestyle. The area has many interesting things to do and see and provides ways of enjoying the Chinese culture while providing some of the aspects of life familiar to those of us from a Western culture.
