The Sole Beneficiary of the Workers Paradise

No friends I haven't gone pink on you yet. I'm not about to start spouting comments from the little red book, but I do believe in a workers paradise. It's not about collective farming or owning the means of production, or any of the the things communists have talked about for so long. The workers paradise is exist friends only in Changzhou, and apparently only for me. I seem to be the only teacher who hasn't been asked to teach a single class or do anything that even remotely looks like work. That's right the workers paradise is doing nothing and getting paid for it. Or I should amend, doing nothing and getting paid for it while be put up in a masters of the universe style apartment. As promised today I'll talk about some of the things I've loved in China. The first I think has to be the people. I really had no idea what exactly to expect when it came to how the people would treat you. Japan, where I was also considering going, is famous for be a pretty closed society that's at some level always distrustful of foreigners. China doesn't really have a set reputation for how they deal with foreigners, but so far all my experiences have been great. People have been really nice and have all gone out of their way to help me. And while I know that I'm paying at least some what more then locals pay for most things, since I still have no idea when it is or is not acceptable to bargain, people have avoided scamming me even when I was basically asking for it. I was buying some potatoes to make mashed potatoes and I had absolutely no idea what potatoes would go for so when they guy made the hand gestures for 4 then 5 I thought he meant 45 when he actually meant 4.5. He was honest enough to give me my money back, though he and everyone around him had a good laugh at me.

While I mentioned in my last post that some of the food really doesn't agree with me, some of it is absolutely fantastic. During the banquet we had some sort of baked eggplant dish that was just amazing, and my favorite little noodle place is constantly very good. The prices in China are also just amazing for everything. For most things I end up spending under a dollar. Tonight for dinner I had some sort of crazy wrap thing from a street vendor, which cost 2.5 RMB, and was enough to split with someone else. Then a meat and rice dish for 6 RMB and a soda for 2.5. Actually the soda was a little expensive by Chinese standards. All told that comes to about $1.50. A lot of others things are cheap too from taxi rides to DVD's and most other things you can think of. On top of that the school pays us pretty well by Chinese standard and even when we are asked to work it isn't exactly a lot. I'll have about 16 hours a week of classes this semester, with little out of class work necessary and maybe half that next semester. On top of that the school pretty much bends all the rules for us. The gates of the school are shut at 11 pm but we can basically get the guards to open it up for us any time we want, something the students certainly can't do. The city they put me in is also really nice. It's big enough to have some American stuff like a Wall-mart and a McDonalds while having maybe a dozen really big beautiful parks and a whole lot of other charming features. Lastly the hotel employs some girls to serve essentially as hosts. There are about four really pretty girls who stand in the lobby and great visitors and sometimes show big delegations or families to their rooms. There's just something nice about being greated by four cute Chinese girls every time you come home that's quite a kick.