Lister and the Dragon

One of the great things about being a “Foreign Expert” in a Chinese college is the amount of free time one has in the job. I’ve been living and teaching in China for about three years now and up until this point I have not been particularly productive with all of those spare hours (I only teach about 16 hours a week and those lesson plans don’t take as long as most teachers would have you believe). I figured it was about time to do something beyond watching every episode of all those American TV shows I missed or catching up on reading all of the books I promised myself I’d get through. I have had a blast doing those two things and they will crop up from time to time in this blog, but I think the time is right (or long overdue) to put into words some of my experiences and thoughts about this strange and wonderful country.

       Unlike most of the big decisions in my life, the idea of travelling to China to teach English was one I had on my own. I suppose that this is as good a time as any to confess that I am your classic under-achiever who needs a good kick up the arse to actually get on with anything. In this case, however the exotic allure of the unknown and the chance for an adventure in a far away land was enough to get me interested and organized. The choice of China as my destination for what is becoming the obligatory foreign experience for university graduates came from three influences. Firstly, all of the talk one hears in the West of the rise of China as a the next superpower and the role the country will play in the world’s economy makes it the obvious place to go to improve one’s CV. Secondly, my studies at university introduced me to Chinese history and I figured I should see the place I pretended to be an expert on in my under-grad and post-grad dissertations. Thirdly, “Flashman and the Dragon” which is a fantastic novel about one of the darker periods in Chinese and British Imperial history and paints a picture of a fascinating and conflicted country and people.

       With the decision made, it was time to figure out how to go about my trip…