A Post-Retirement Option

Allen Havard, RTAM Member

As a result of growing up in an economically challenged household, I never aspired to become a teacher. After nearly completing Grade Twelve, I was approached by a group of parents to become a permit teacher in their 8 grade, 1 room rural school. The rest is history. Throughout the next 35 years, I sincerely enjoyed teaching and administering in the public school system. However, I always had a dream that someday I would love to experience teaching in an environment where I could devote 100% of my time to the actual job I loved, and not a high percentage to disciplining the students. At the ripe old age of 54, I decided to retire because I was burning out and a few or our younger friends were dying from heart attack, brain aneurysm, or cancer. Now was the time to seek out my dream. My wife, a teacher, our adult son, our recently adopted 10 year old son, and I set off to Shenyang, China, for 10 months to teach English. Without a doubt, it was the best adventure in my life. I feel it is important to state clearly that I am not in any way setting myself up as an expert on China. What I am sharing is my personal experience over a 10 month period in a culture with a 6,000 year old history.

Actual Experience

We were met at the airport by an English-speaking delegation of Chinese fellow teachers. We swept through the darkened city of 8 million on route to our university accommodation in a jet lagged frame of mind.

Food: Every living thing that walks, swims, or flies can be considered a source of food with a variety of recipes for preparation of each species. I feel this may have become acceptable because of the country’s history of natural and man-made famines. Colleagues of ours shared stories about they had lived on grass and tree bark during such times. At present, food of all types is plentiful.

Accommodations: In our case, we lived in western style apartments along with foreign teachers from England, Australia and USA. In terms of the Chinese people their accommodations were dependent upon their economic levels which actually meant their political connections. There is a whole range stretching from cinder brick sheds to luxury condominiums as well as western style suburbs in gated communities. The whole of our city appeared to be under construction as the old was torn down to be replaced with modern, more expensive private condos. No problems in having to expropriate the site to modernize, as all land is state owned.

Medical services: Chinese people of all ages feel that it is their individual responsibility to maintain their own health through daily exercise, proper diet, and drinking lots of boiled water. Excellent medical services are available to everyone who can afford them. An interesting caution here might be that Chinese avoid freezing for dental work if at all possible as they believe it damages brain cells. Western trained dentists are only for the very rich clients.

Law and order: We felt safe wherever we walked or travelled. Local people avoid the police whenever possible. I feel that there are very few police for too many people. Students said that police will respond to their concerns by saying, “Don’t bother me, I have other problems!” As experienced travellers, we watched our possessions out in public and avoided risky areas as we would have in any city.

A point of interest here is that a jail experience in China is not pleasant. They believe that prisoners must work if they want to eat. The jailors accept construction contracts for the sewage system, street paving, etc. and use convict labour. It was common to pass beside groups of men with shaved heads and bright orange coveralls working. Drug use did not seem to be so widespread there as it is North America. A factor may be that, unofficially, drug sellers are shot but I never actually saw this. Organ sales are controlled by the military for the lucrative foreigner market.

Travel: China has 28 recognized World Heritage sites. Train travel is cheap, safe and an adventure if you keep an open mind and want to meet ordinary people. A caution here is that Chinese do not line up

as we do, so do not feel embarrassed to push onto the train with the rest. Hotels are cheap, clean and safe without using the 5 Star sites developed for the rich tourists. Our employer provided us with a guide who made everything flow smoothly.

Employers are responsible for the safety of their foreign employees, so it made sense to provide guides whenever we asked for one. It was usually one of our Chinese colleagues who would have a working vacation along with us.

Government: In China, about 10% of the population belong to the Communist Party which runs everything. It is a strange system of state control and a wild west, free economic system. The ruling class are mainly engineers and economists. They follow a very pragmatic approach meaning if it doesn't work, change the approach.

This approach is in stark contrast to their parent system used by the former USSR mentors. The former USSR form of communism followed a dogmatic approach wherein "If it doesn't work, repeat the actions as indicated in the rules". Russia is in the toilet and China is taking over the world economically. 99% of all Walmart and Dollar Store merchandise comes out of China so who amongst us is not supporting China's economy? China's growing economy is now competing for world oil supplies and our fuel costs rise accordingly.

Our excess supplies of cans, plastic bottles, and paper from our Canadian recycling systems are shipped off to China. In China, they are recycled into products and sold back to us in our stores as goods imported.

Culture: I think that, to most Canadians, Chinese are one people. However, on their National TV programs, they always say China is 57 different nationalities. Their national approach reminded me of Winnipeg's Folklorama week. All these minorities are excused from the One Child policy to encourage their growth.

The family unit is very strong. The one child policy is putting terrible pressure on children as four grandparents and two parents are totally focused on each child. Male children are most wanted and tend to be spoiled as a result. Interestingly, most of our students were girls preparing to study abroad.

Young people refer to their cousins as brother or sister. Our 10-year old adopted son was constantly being invited out for lunch by groups of students who I feel just liked being around a little brother.

Before anyone passes judgement on the one child policy, I would recommend you visit China and experience the crowding. China has 1,400,000,000 in a land mass similar to Canada. We have 33,000,000. Their culture is 6000 years old and most are familiar with and proud of their past. They or their ancestors are not from some other country as is our Canadian experience.

Snow removal: In Shenyang (population of 8 million), they had only 3 snow plows. Each building had a special shed wherein hundreds of hand shovels were stored. After a snowstorm, everyone ages 12 and up regardless of sex went out and cleared the streets. If a business does not clear away the snow, it will be done by the city and the costs will be billed to the business.

University: All students must live on the campus in very Spartan conditions. Each morning at 6, everyone, in matching tracksuits, lines up for exercise on the football field, followed by a little jog around the campus. There are on average 400 applications for each available spot. Families with lots of money try to educate their child abroad. This has become a very lucrative business for most English-speaking countries like Canada.

I went to China with the attitude that whenever I encountered something that shocked me, I would say 1.4 billion could not have it wrong. The problem was that I was different. I will not share what shocked me because it would feed into Western