Check out Changzhou

China is a big country and has thousand of years of history. My aim in China is to see as much of it as possible, which requires going to as many places as possible! Living in Wuxi (无锡）I am on the Shanghai to Nanjing railway line. This line has many stops, the first one I checked out was the one to Changzhou (常州). Like Wuxi, Changzhou has a multi-million population, and is unknown outside of China (and quite possible unknown outside of Jiangsu Province.)

By slow train, the journey is about an hour, and tickets cost about 20 yuan (£2). The itself is clean and feels very safe and the city centre is compact and easy and cheap to get around by bus (1 yuan).

Changzhou has several specular old temples and buildings, as shown above, as well as several high-end hotels. It is possible to find good accommodation for about 150 yuan a night though. 

Changzhou is a very interesting "small" city and I would recommend visiting the city. Wuxi has few foreigners, but time in the city I didn't see a single foreigner! 真奇怪啊！

Wuxi Life

With only a day to settle in Wuxi before the first day of work, I was more or less thrown in at the deep-end. Having been shown my office, my first class would be at 1.25 in the afternoon. It wasn't until after my first class, that I found out that I would be teaching all 3 ability groups. One could call my first class a baptism of fire; my advice for anyone thinking of teaching in China, unless you can 1.) speak Chinese and 2.) have an enormous amount of patience, think very hard about teaching in a Chinese middle or upper school!

However, teaching can (and was for me) very rewarding. As a teacher there will often be the students who really want to learn and take a lot from your classes, that is what makes teaching worthwhile doing. Chinese students have to work so hard, so if you make the lesson engaging, but also fun and different from their monotonous rote learning they are accustomed to, you are sure to become their favourite teacher in a very short space of time!

In Wuxi, one I found the Blue Bar, the main ex-pat bar in Wuxi and made some new ex-pat friends, I settled into Wuxilife quite well and used the city as a base to travel to other places in China as well as Asia. There will be many more blog posts here detailing my trips to other places and countries!

My aim is also to be fluent in Chinese in 3 years, with reading, writing and speaking. It can be done, all you need is 努力学习!