A Diary Report ...

Today’s report begins last night when I sat and marked a bundle of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ news reports. Jeanette sat in the study and watched two episodes of Spooks with the heater on and the door closed while I worked. But it had to be done, and there’s a heap more to mark yet. I did have my computer on also, with the CricInfo scores from Chandigarh coming through where India and Australia were playing a one-day cricket game. Australia won, with another great innings by Damien Martyn.

Monday morning I teach ‘Selected Readings’ (Western Media) at 8 o’clock in Building 12, a new building just recently opened. It may be new, but still the smell from the toilets has managed to infiltrate the corridors and seep into the classrooms nearby. The students are delightful, if uncooperative. I say ‘uncooperative’ but really they are monumentally shy and wouldn’t say boo to a mouse. I ask questions and wait for an answer: silence. Sometimes one of my more adventurous students in the front row will whisper an answer, but they will never say it for the whole class to hear. If I insist and get them to stand up, they will hang their head and either remain silent or whisper so even I have to lean forward and put my ear to their mouth. Frustrating. These are Second Years – or, as they call them here, sophomores. They go by the USA system.

It was chilly this morning, but not freezing. Little birds were chirping in the vines covering some old flats as I walked back. The campus has old accommodation, like little cells, still sitting and growing weeds between the newer blocks of flats, all before the big new architectural structures which have taken over the area where an ancient and, by all accounts, beautiful garden and zoo once stood. The little pagoda and the well-decorated entrance to the old garden still stand, and a walkway and little bridge of stone traverses the still waters, which lie like a neglected lake between the building sites and the roadway and off-white domestic apartment buildings off campus.

Here, under a weeping tree in the old garden by the lake, a saxophone student practises, and a flute-player (perhaps the same player), plus a male tenor singer who sings scales some days(maddening). The sax player sounds terrific, but I don’t think they will be out there much longer, playing sax and flute with frozen lips.

In this ancient city, once a major regional capital, the garden may have been an emperor’s retreat where he walked and entertained his ladies and visitors. When I expressed concern that the old China was being destroyed, a student said matter-of-factly, We need the area for classrooms. There was no hint of sadness or concern. Perhaps it was just the forward-thinking of youth that made her so practical, but without the Old China there wouldn’t be a tourism industry—and that’s a very practical aspect of the New China’s economy.

I look out on polluted days like this and see the dirty still waters. They have planted water lilies to consume the algal bloom and clean the waters. Most days there are people there, sitting by the water, fishing for sustenance. On one side, the vines have covered all the building rubble and the rusting remains of an old aircraft.