Old people in China are trying to kill me

Their efforts occur principally on my skate to and from lessons. The journey takes about 40 minutes and I am grateful for it as it is going someway to counteract the vast quantity of food (which is consists principally of oil, grease and fat) I have been eating. Some days I make the journey four times; going to teach in the morning, returning for lunch and then going back to study Chinese in the afternoon. Anyway, it is a journey fraught with danger, the Chinese appear to apply the same policy to other road users that small children apply to monsters. Namedly that if you can't see it, it is not there. Therefore whenever a Chinese driver, cyclist or pedestrian (who believe, if anything, they have more right than the HGV to be in the fast lane of a highway) crosses the flow of traffic, their gaze will be fixed obstinately in the opposite direction to the source of vehicles. This problem is particularly prevolent in the elderly, who, fortunately, do not often drive but still make every effort to turn their bicycles and electric scooters into deadly weapons. To be honest, I do not think that they pose a threat greater than any other age group, I am just freaked out by the cold stare that I receive in return for any exasperated look as a result of a near death experience.

The elderly are revered in China. It has been a tradition, encouraged by Confucious and now by the Communist Party, for children to have absolute respect for and take care of their elderly relatives. I agree with the sentiment, however I believe that this has led to many old-timers in China acting like spoilt Western children. They are the ones who push the most in queues or interupt when you are asking a shop assistant a question (or in my case trying to demonstrate a usb cable in hand gestures). However, some are very friendly. Yesterday I had a fifteen minute conversation with three ancient women who live near our appartment. I say conversation, in the quarter of an hour period we managed to establish that I was nineteen, I lived with the tall foreigner who has a dog and that I knew the character's for China.

On a different subject, I have begun teaching my class of Koreans. I have the middle tier which consists of five boys aged 12 to 16. They are all pretty chilled out which is good, and one or two speak enough English to be able to hold a simple conversation. I am teaching them five days a week for 2 1/4 hours, so it will be a challenge to keep them interested. I will have to think of plenty of useful but not patronising games (we are already tiring of hangman). One other problem is that they now all have electronic dictionaries and it is hard to tear their gazes from them. Therefore I have instigated the rule that each lesson one student will be the 'Dictionary Master' and the others will have to ask him in English to check something. I should probably tell you their names as they are reasonably amusing (not of the caliber of Hovercraft, Happy and Red [names adopted by Chinese people I have met]). They are, in alphabetical order, Aben, Albert, Alvin, Baron and Brian. I think the funniest names are the particularly old-person sounding English ones. For example, Wojciech has a pupil who is about 6, clinically insane and i with little or no English called Bob. This made me burst out laughing.