This time last year I didn’t even know it exists. It’s no wonder, since I didn’t know that Xi’an, Wuhan, Wenzhou, Chengdu and many other places important for Chinese history or today’s economy exist. I did know about Beijing and Shanghai, but not about the rest of the cities, some of which are more populated than Paris or London.

Ningbo is there, population of more than seven million. Apparently has a 4800 year long history and was an important trade point of the silk route. Then Arabs, Jews and Europeans came and brought their merchandise to China, some of them settled down.

If we were talking about Europe, this history would have probably shaped a huge, vivid city, with beautiful, vibrant old town in the middle, buzzing with tourists and nightlife. It would inspire artists and promote culture. One or two great Chinese artist would have been born here and we would see their statues on the squares. There would be signs on some old buildings “such and such a famous person lived here for x years and composed the work y.”

But we are in China.

Actually, I don’t mean that the city is empty of beauty and culture. It is not. Nevertheless, a lot has happened that has not happened in Europe: opium wars, civil wars, Japanese invasion and many other fun things that we are still not supposed to talk about while we are residents of this wonderful but scarred country. Those events left almost everything that was old in ruin, leaving only the remains of what the old town might have been, had it the opportunity to last. There are some ancient temples, like Tiantong temple, visited last year by me. There is a sacred island for the Buddhists, Putuoshan. There is Laowei tang, a place for the foreigners to go to an Irish pub and pretend they are in Europe, beautiful boulevards, ingeniously lit at night. There is an art museum with works of a Chinese painter who inspired Picasso.

According to my colleague Michael, who’s been coming here to teach for years, six years ago you could see the tower of the University of Nottingham (a sister university of the University of Nottingham in actual Nottingham. I believe that the one in Ningbo must be the original one) from anywhere in the northern part of the city. There were only universities, roads that led there and rice fields. Now I can see the tower way down below from my balcony on the fifteenth floor and I’m lucky, as the sky-scrapers around me pretty much limit the view. Everything is new and probably wasn’t here when I graduated from high-school (which was not long time ago). It’s a city made of glass and lights with parks in between, fortunately. At night it lights up in artificial colours.

Ningbo is inhabited by foreigners and 90% of them work for Nottingham. Therefore, people do not become friends only because they are not Chinese. However, it doesn’t influence the ability of the local people to speak English. It is too expensive to study English.

It is an extremely wealthy and expensive city. The religious diversity is amazing. There are Buddhists, obviously, but also a lot of Muslims, which is apparent due to the amount of Halal restaurants easy to find anywhere in the city. This part of China is very Christian and there are two big churches in Ningbo. The first one is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Laoweitang built in the eighteenth century. It looks like somebody cut it off a picture of Europe and pasted into the Chinese city; as if you cut off a picture of a gorilla’s head and stuck it to the body of a girl wearing a pink dress. Another one, is in fact pink, a huge Protestant church close to Tienyi square, a huge shopping area.

As to Ningbo’s culture, I make promise to try to explore the remains of it and describe it here. As for now, I only discovered that there are cafes and pubs nearby that sell German beer and I am welcome to come there and play the piano. The owner plays really well and gave me his notes saying: Go ahead, play! That’s when I discovered that the Chinese write notes differently. Why am I not surprised?

The new job started and so it happens that I am a university teacher now. Who would have thought. Not much has changed though. I am not even entitled to be called “professor,” I am still a normal “teacher” or “Julia” that nobody knows how to pronounce. Yet, some of it is new.

First of all, the respect that Chinese students pay the teacher is incredible. You cannot observe it when they are ten and in a training school, but when the students get eighteen and they really want to do well in their studies, you do. Nobody in Europe listens to university teachers that much. You tell them: “Be quiet!” and the class of forty students fall silent. You give them instructions and they follow. You rule the class. The key lies in enjoying ruling the class and in giving good instructions.

Ruling the class might also mean running around like a headless chicken and trying to talk to everybody. I sweat through my clothes, as there is no AC. That is why I prefer to make them run around and I walk gracefully among them for a change. The trouble is that when they mingle, boys will not speak to girls and vice versa, claiming that they are too shy. Really, they are eighteen! Now I stopped to think if I was afraid of boys when I was fifteen, but I couldn’t have been, there were almost no girls in my class and I obviously didn’t fear my classmates. Now, I usually count to five to give them time to run to the opposite end of the room where the girls gather around in a circle. They wait until I say “five” to actually move.

There was one boy who stood up in front of the whole class, asked if I have a boyfriend and when I refused to say, asked for my telephone number. This guy is afraid to talk to the girls, too.

In general, I have a feeling that the younger generation of Chinese people is growing up to be much more confident and assertive. I was afraid that they would not talk in groups or mingle. Indeed, at first they were shocked, but they did it anyway. They come to me after class to chat, they ask questions and speak up. I even had a student rap in front of everybody. Polish students are not so confident, teachers always needed to work on us for some time to make us speak.

Neither do they agree to everything that I propose. I had a series of battles over ridiculous names that they refuse to change. One boy is named “Bear” because it means, in his opinion, “to bear something”, so strength and perseverance. That’s not a name and that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, but go ahead and try to convince him. Another girl calls herself “Lasia” that I immediately changed to “Lucia”, which resulted in her correcting everybody who called her my version of the name. She created her name and she wants it this way. Those people are adults and you can’t do anything about it. When they finally graduate and do business with foreigners, as is their ambition, they eventually may. Luckily, I managed to convince a “Devil” to change her name. I still need to talk to “Stinky.”

They also know a lot about the world outside China. For instance, in two groups there were students who guessed that I’m from Poland by just taking into consideration the colour of my eyes. Really, if this weird grayish bluish colour is really typical for Poles (I’m not sure), how many Poles have they seen anyway to know?! What I find nice is that I don’t need to pretend that I am very English. They wouldn’t buy it anyway.

Anyway, the funny thing is that I wasn’t a freshman so long ago (that’s what I like to think at least) and there is not much age difference between us, but I already see them as children. You can observe it with boys especially. Some of them are normal adult guys and some act up and try to attract attention like fifteen-year-olds. Girls are usually lovely. Many of them are really gorgeous and wear princess dresses to class.

The most peculiar class is the Spanish course. I have taught only one class. I thought they might find the pronunciation rules confusing, but they understood quickly how to pronounce letters and letter clusters. The problem is that they can understand, but cannot imitate many Spanish sounds, such as “j” (pronounced like “h”, strongly, as if you were about to spit, common sound of a Chinese street), “r” (similar to Polish “r”) and “rr” (strong, vibrating r). instead of “r” they say “l” and it must be good enough for now I’m afraid. Besides, I got the worst textbook ever. It starts with a text that says more or less “this is Pepe. Pepe is Mexican. This is Ana. Ana is Cuban....” and the aim of the lesson is to recite the text by heart. Come on. If you meet a Spanish person, what would reciting a text by heart help you?! I have to prepare new materials for them, then. The last lesson ended in students mingling and saying a dialogue we have just drilled: “A: Hi. What’s your name? B: My name is... Where are you from? A: I’m Chinese.” It was so cute to have thirty Chinese students say it to one another. What I did wrong was to forget to teach them to say “bye” and some girls asked me how to say it after the class. But seriously, it just didn’t fit, you usually don’t say “A: Where are you from? B: I’m Chinese. A: Bye!” It would be offensive, don’t you think? What’s more, I teach Spanish to Chinese people in English, by the end of the class I wasn’t sure what language I was speaking. I possible, I write Chinese characters on the board instead of explaining the meaning in English. Less talking.

So now I’m going to bed, prepared for my classes on Sunday morning. At least it is really nice to teach people who genuinely want to learn.

Hello and welcome. As I have no idea how to start, I will start with introducing myself to those who do not know me. My name is Julia, but it’s pronounced Yulia, which causes endless confusion. You may have already guessed that I’m not English and you’re right, I’m not English, American, Australian. Name an English speaking country and I’m not from there. I’m Polish. What’s my job? I’m an English teacher.

Let me explain how I became an English teacher, as it leads to the main topic of the blog, which is China and the relationship that I have with the language of the blog, which is English. I was growing up, told by parents that I must be an engineer, computer programmer, accountant or a doctor otherwise I’m bringing shame to my family. Parents, don’t tell your children what brings shame to the family, you just give them temptations that they can’t resist. Obviously, I was also forced to study English to get a better job as a computer programmer, accountant, doctor, etc. Soon enough I discovered that I might be good at science and Math, but they bore me to death (or I enjoy annoying the family) and I like studying languages. I never particularly loved English, but it was the first foreign language I have learned and became fluent when I was in my early teens. Also, I was and I am till this day a terrible geek and I spent childhood and teenage years reading books. I’m still great with books, languages and words, but not so great at using them to talk to people.

As a consequence, I rejected the bright career path of an engineer and chose the path that allowed me to be read and study languages since I absolutely hated studying anything else. To be honest, I thought it will not be work at all (I was wrong). After one year of English Studies at the University of Silesia, Poland, I decided that I am bored (again) and I absolutely must study Spanish. I enrolled into Spanish Studies, did two majors at the same time and became a disgusting workaholic. Nevertheless, I met my best friends there and had a fantastic time that sadly will never come back again.

For many years Spain was the country I often visited, lived there for almost a year and wanted to spend my life in. It would have happened, I’m absolutely certain, had it not been for the recession. It is impossible to get a job in Spain now. Although I probably would be able to, as my friend Kasia, but meanwhile, China happened and life brought me very far away from Spain. You can’t cheat fate. Still, Spain, everything I left there and all that happened to me there are very dear for me.

Now I feel nostalgic and sad, so let’s come back to the present times. Why did I want to become a teacher? The answer is, I never wanted to be a teacher. I absolutely hated the idea. Unfortunately, you cannot escape your fate. First it was a good way to earn extra money, then it was the only thing I knew how to do for money. Moreover, I wanted to travel since I was a little child and a teenager whose way of rebelling was hating my small town and everybody in it. English saved me from this life. When I was growing up, I enjoyed English lessons and learning about the world outside. England seemed then so exotic and far away. All of it taught me that world is much bigger than my Polish province and it’s mentality. So in short, English language saved me from becoming a good Polish Catholic and for that I must be etarnaly thankful.

Now, paradoxically, I am a foreign teacher and I feel like I’m giving it back to the Chinese students. I think that my job is to show them that they don’t have to be shy and that they should express themselves and speak their mind. They have a lot to offer to the world, they just need the courage.

Why did I come to China? I don’t know, have I been English, they would probably hired me somewhere in Europe. But well, I’m not and there are many teaching jobs in China. I just got an invitation for an interview. I didn’t want the job, but my friend Mohamed forced me to have the interview and I took it. Those who are interested can get Mohamed’s email and write him a thankful letter or a list of insults (the choice is yours).

I worked for EF in Zhejiang province for eight and half months. As I love my ex-colleagues (ok ok ok, almost all of them) and I have made great friends, the workload killed me. Now I’m working for a university in Ningbo, where I teach Oral English and Spanish. Unfortunately, I realized that I will be an EF teacher as long as I am a teacher. EF taught me how to plan my lessons, how to be a team player, how to introduce discipline into my classroom and be a bitch when I’m being disobeyed. Most importantly, it taught me how to fake enthusiasm, look perfectly happy and be energetic when in fact I feel like I would like to vomit on the floor/ lock myself in my room and read Harry Potter for the tenth time/ get on a bus and go anywhere as long as it is far away/ kill a colleague or a student/ cry. We were an amazing team, loyal to one another and always sticking together through thick and thin. It’s a shame that it fell apart, but I it would be unbearable if it lasted forever.

So, this blog is my very subjective story about China. Last year my Polish blog was full of amazement and enthusiasm, e.g. “uau, they drink hot water here!” “I cannot use chopsticks, how will I eat?!” I apologize because I’m now quite used to China and its ways and probably nothing can surprise me anymore. I study Chinese with my great friend Jiejie, I’ve travelled around a bit and I became quite a good Chinese cook (my only hobby when I worked for EF was cooking and drinking, I was completely unable to do anything that requires the use of brain cells). Moreover, the people reading this are mostly people who already live in China. However, the day when I stop liking to write will be the day that my brain stops to work, so I will continue writing and telling stories. What is also amazing about China is that you can find something new every day. It’s a huge country that is impossible to fully understand in a lifetime.

I will be extremely happy if you bear with me and read what I write here. As you can see, I am no bloody Shakespeare, but I promise to do my best not to butcher English. Writing makes me feel closer to people and recently the people who I’m close to are not native speakers (of Polish). So all I can say is welcome.