Last night four of us got drunk and invented a new game: Ren Hockey (literally ‘people hockey’).  This sport involves using people as hockey sticks and dragging them by the feet across polished floors in order to send a slipper flying through the goalposts. Watch out for it in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

I take off my coat and collect my books, lesson plan, marker and whiteboard eraser from my desk.  Back out in the reception one of the girls hands me the level 4 attendance form.  I thank her and trudge off to my classroom. 

When I enter, a couple of students look up, their 19-year-old faces creased with earnest disinterest.  The others continue their chatting. 

‘Morning!’ I said.  ‘Lovely to see you all!’

A few more of them look up and give me the puzzled smiles that you always get for the few seconds it takes for them to comprehend your words.  ‘And a beautiful day it is, too!’ I continue.  ‘The birds are singing in the trees, the bluebottles are green, the bees are on their knees singing hallelujah.’

I do the roll call, ticking off the students.  Just as I have finished and am tucking the form away, the door flies open and another student enters, puffing and panting.  ‘Ah Grapefruit,’ I exclaim, ‘I’m so pleased that you could make it.’

‘I’m very sorry I’m late,’ she puffs, scrambling for a seat.

‘Bus was late again?  Dog ate your homework?  Cat got your tongue?’

She looks at me, frowning in miscomprehension, still trying to catch her breath.  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again.  ‘But every day when I get to the bus stop, the bus is just leaving, and I run, but… I hope you can forgive me…’  I look at her and she is staring back at me with sad, puppy dog eyes.  I have to laugh.

When I first started teaching here I was surprised and bemused to find classes of Rainbows, Clouds, Crystals, Cherrys, Tazans, Brushes, Snow Whites and Narcisses.  I wondered if the teacher before me had been one of those odd people who delight in the secret (or public) degradation of students.  However I was assured by my students that they knew the meaning of their English names and were perfectly happy with them.

Before too long I began to get into the swing of things, and when presented with my first class of new un-christened students I found great pleasure in finding names for them.  I started off with vegetables, delighting in such names as Lettuce, Cabbage, Potato, Tomato, Turnip, Onion and Mushroom.  Soon, though, I was forced to branch out to other food types, thus the rest of my class consisted of Lemon, Lime, Vinegar, Porridge, Carbonara, Risotto, Ravioli, Offal, Oatmeal, and my favourite, Paste.

Next class I discovered the joys of medical conditions and expanded my repertoire to include Dementia, Menstruation, Asthma, Exzema, Insomnia, Influenza and Gastro.  The medical terms branched out further to include body parts (Nostril, Cornea, Cleavage, Sputum, Pimple, Cranny, Crevice) and then onwards to chemical substances, hence Formaldahyde, Chlorine, Pesticide, Spermaicide, Bleach, Shampoo, and two more students were christened, perhaps fortunately, Absorption and Osmosis.

After that I went through a phase of naming them after inanimate objects (Fridge, Pedestrian, Rickshaw, Trinket, Clock, Paperclip, Foghorn), classical-sounding names (Nexus, Heresy, Eudoxia, Lesbos, Aphrodite, Viagra).

My regular dinner with Happy on a Tuesday night.  Happy is a Chinese English teacher, a plump woman with a jolly round face and thick spectacles.  This evening, for the first time, I go to her house rather than her parents’ house for dinner.  She meets me at the gates of Zhan Si primary school after my class and as we are walking back to her apartment, she wheeling her bicycle, she tells me happily that her husband will be cooking tonight; I take this to mean that it will be a girls’ conversation night.  She asks if I know how to ride a bicycle, and urges me to have a go on hers.  I do so, and find (a) that her bike is much too small for me, and (b) that I spend most of my time swerving to avoid bits of broken glass in the muddy rubbish-strewn lanes.  We reach her building, park the bicycle next to a rubbish dump and climb four flights of stairs in grimy semi-darkness to her apartment.

Inside her husband is crouching on a small stool in front of the TV peeling potatoes.  He greets us with a smile.  We transfer our feet into slippers and I glance around.  The sitting room is sparsely furnished.  Off the sitting room is a tiny bedroom.  A hallway has a dining table, fridge and washing machine.  Off the hallway is the largest building in the house.  Glancing inside, at first the rows of tables make me think it is a restaurant, but then I see the blackboard on the far wall.  ‘My second job,’ explains Happy.

At the end of the hallway is the kitchen, a kind of covered balcony equipped with all mod cons – running water, a stove, an ancient microwave.  From the kitchen window there is a view over the playground of Middle School #4, where 300 Grade 1 students are practicing their drills and formations for the inter-school sports meeting at the end of the week.  Their formations are impressive and their movements well-synchronised, their blue uniforms and yellow pompoms pleasing to the eye.  Even the boys at the back, unsupervised, are hopping happily and unashamedly from right foot to left, raising their pompoms on cue.  Happy tells me that they are the best school in the area and that they are likely to win the sports competition.

We sit at the table in the hallway while gorgeous smells start to drift through from the kitchen.  We each have a paper cup of beer, I’m drinking mine, Happy is pretending to drink hers. 

I ask her how she met her husband.  ‘We were introduced,’ she replies, ‘by the headmaster of the school I used to teach at.  He knew both of us and thought we would be good for each other.  I was 29 and he was 32 when we married.’  She pauses.  ‘Can I ask you a personal question?  You don’t have to answer it.’

‘Sure.’

‘When will you marry?’

I smile.  ‘Probably never.’

She looks a little shocked.  ‘But... that is OK for you?’

‘I’m happy alone.’

‘This is impossible in China.  To be alone is a terrible thing.’  She asks, ‘How do people find a husband in England?’  Do they have to be introduced?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I say.  ‘It’s possible to marry someone you met in the street.’

She is a little taken aback by this.  ‘I wish I could have done that,’ she says.  ‘I was married because everybody knew that it was time for me to be married, and so they introduced me to a man they thought would be good for me.’  She lowers her voice a little, needlessly perhaps, as her husband understands not one word of English.  ‘And if a husband and wife are unhappy, they do not separate.  They must keep living together and try to work it out.’

I fight off the urge to ask her whether she is unhappy, and ask instead, ‘What about your brother and sister?  Will they marry soon?’

‘Yes,’ she says.  ‘My sister is 29 and my brother is 27 and they both want to marry.  Because I am the oldest child I must pay 1000 yuan for each of their weddings.  Also I must give money to my parents every month because they are too old to work.  From my job I earn 1000 yuan every month.  I earn more than my husband, but still my wage is not enough to feed my son.  That is why…’ She motions toward the classroom.

I ask her if her parents will come and live with her when they get a little older. 

‘Of course,’ she says.  It is my duty to look after them as they looked after me until I was married.  The same as it is my duty to look after my son until he is married.  That is why I have to live in Jinzhou.  Will you,’ she asks, ‘have to look after your parents when they get older?’

‘Not in the same way,’ I say.  ‘I’ll probably visit them in their nursing homes…’

‘You have so much freedom.  You are so lucky.’  I look at her, and she is not complaining but showing true envy.  ‘You don’t have to marry, you can travel, you don’t have to look after your parents or have children…’

And it’s true.  Suddenly I do feel very lucky.  I am young, rich (I think guiltily about my 5500 yuan a month), have 2 passports and no obligations to anyone but myself.  I have told her that I am happy alone, but with that looms the possibility of loneliness.

It seems to me that this is the fundamental difference between Chinese and Western culture.  The Chinese make sure to surround themselves with people, to whom there are obligations but these obligations are mutual and there is always someone there to help at the slightest obstacle.  Loneliness is a foreign concept, but independence is equally so.

Whereas in the west we work on an ‘every man for himself’ basis, a more selfish dog-eat-dog world where loneliness is rife.  There are problems with each way of living, but can we ever say that one way is better than the other?