Kung fu and culture: wrapping up my China Internship

After six months of teaching English in China, intern Dave is ready for a break. Find out about learning authentic kung fu and visiting some historic sites.

In my final blog of China I want to give a quick review over everything I’ve experienced while here, or at least enough to hopefully convince you that you should definitely make the decision to come here. You think it’s expensive, I know you do, part of you thinks you should wait until you have more money. If you are clever and get into the whole ‘China’ thing you could probably live here, hyperbolically, for about a pound. I am a lazy, cynical, anti-social, frequently miserable, unadventurous arse, pretty much all of the time, so if you would score higher on a personality test than me you can only enjoy this place more than I have.

I finally, after what feels exactly like :

a)no time at all and

b)my entire existence

have completed my Chinese English Teaching Internship. I have ended up really missing the kids I was teaching already and at least one or two of the staff at the school I will never forget. Sure I had to develop some pretty manipulative techniques to trick the kids into speaking exclusively in English but who doesn’t love a little bit of power. There was also the downside of dealing with a few fellow teachers who seemed to learn how to be human from watching robots learning to speak, this meant they sometimes treated me more like a pet than a colleague. They would be bringing me food, petting my head, showing me off to friends, tying me to a lamp post, taking me outside to pee, and striking me with a stick if I found my self humping the leg of a stranger. Of course all was forgiven with a scratch behind the ear and a belly rub. A belly, which they were very ready to remind me, had got larger since I had arrived.

I studied Chinese in the school I was working in and and therefore learned, from a student’s perspective, how frustrating it can be when a teacher doesn’t understand that today just isn’t a day for learning. I also understand how within the confines of this education system that that doesn’t matter and I am a terrible student. Teaching has taught me a lot about what it feels like to be a student including how much of a pain in the ass I was and continue to be to my own teachers. No longer do I feel I am suffering at the hands of a malevolent teacher like some sort’ve Sith Lord, instead more likely a caring teacher who saw the best in me and was frustrated by my lack of self discipline.

Aside from the teaching I spent just shy of a month up a mountain in -17 degrees weather learning kung fu. I would get up at 6.15 every morning and train until 6pm. The training was great fun and something that is available almost anywhere in China through websites like studymartialarts.org. I lost a tremendous amount of weight (mainly because 3 of my limbs shattered and fell off like a Sub-Zero fatality in Mortal Kombat), and I really immersed myself in Chinese culture. I learned a lot but the thing that will stay with me is that in -17 degrees it is possible for a lithium battery to freeze, making it impossible to charge my phone, iPad or macbook.

I also got the opportunity to visit the Shaolin Temple with a friend in Luoyang just prior to my kung fu experience. She was very generous, giving me somewhere to stay, taking me to see the Shaolin Temple and even giving me a fever with a temperature of about 40 degrees, completely paralysing me for a solid week into my training. This disease then infected the entire school, making me patient zero in what I suspected was the beginning of a kung-fu zombie movie I was now trapped in. It was worth it to see the temple and the other beautiful sights down there though.

I have developed a strong love for Beijing and the surrounding areas, I am more heartbroken going home than I was leaving home behind. Things don’t work over here in the same way as they do anywhere in the world, and in many ways they shouldn’t work at all. The only thing stopping constant car crashes in Beijing, for example, seems to be a science fiction esque Hive Mind shared by every one on the roads.

When it comes to loving this place I don’t know whether it’s the job, my friends, the Chinese people, the culture or whatever, but China is a place that needs to lived in. At least until you can push through the discomfort of culture shock into feeling at home. The first blog I wrote about this was a tremendously self indulgent rambling on how homesick I was, and even after going up a mountain for a month I felt like I missed Beijing more than any quantifiable graph or chart could explain. So after six months of being here I feel like the time has flown in, as often with these kinds of things the days could be very long but the months were far too short.