Jasmine Wallis, Wanganui High School teacher, returned from a year-long Ministry of Education Language Immersion Award teacher exchange to China earlier this year.
She began her exchange in May 2006 and for her first semester studied at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU). She lived on the old campus of the university and took the school bus every morning and afternoon to the new campus with the other teachers and students.
After XISU, Jasmine spent her second semester studying at Shaanxi Traditional Medical University where her classes included reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, calligraphy, PE, and Chinese culture.
In Wanganui she taught Mandarin (as well as Japanese) and hopes her experience will help her students back home gain a better understanding of the language. Jasmine reports on her the first semester she spent at XISU:
”China is a country with a long, proud history, but at the same time it is racing towards modernisation with open arms. Although the Middle Kingdom seems to be a place of contrast, over the last five months of studying at XISU I have started to feel at home. Xi’an is the capital of the Shaanxi province with a population of about 7.5 million. I arrived to 30°csomething degree heat, only to be told it would quickly get up to 45°c! However, it wasn’t just the heat that took a bit of getting used to. After six years of teaching, the shoe was now on the other foot. Suddenly, I was the student, plunged into total immersion classes, initially struggling to figure out what the teacher was saying and how to do the homework.
With classmates from Kazakhstan, Korea, Japan, Italy, France and Brazil, our only common language was Chinese. Chinese students seem to be early risers and by 6am hundreds of students are already walking or running around on the university’s track or standing around reciting their textbooks aloud to practice their English. Classes start at 8am and are two hours long (with a 10 minute interval halfway through). Lunch is from 12-2pm and generally includes an hour-long nap, as it is way too hot to do anything else.
The high-light of my time here so far would definitely be the volunteer teaching I did in Inner Mongolia over the summer holidays. Why? Because my friend’s family basically adopted me, which gave me the chance to see how a Chinese family really lives. Chinese people, being the amazing hosts they are, ensured I never went hungry!
Although I did experience a bit of culture shock at the beginning of my exchange, I now feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it! The differences between how we might do something in NZ and how it is done in China no longer faze me. In part, that’s due to better understanding the old adage “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Having made so many friends here, I’m afraid the remaining time will fl y by and before I know it, it will be time to say goodbye to them. However, the silver lining will be getting back to NZ and sharing my experience of life in the Middle Kingdom with my Mandarin classes.”
