Seven hours on a train, a seafood dinner I couldn't eat, a squat toilet, and three days to learn 12 classes worth of teaching from John Hankin before he left on Saturday.
Seven hours on the train, another hour in a car with a 19-year-old admin assistant who wanted to know if I'd ever eaten chicken feet. That was my introduction to Fuzhou. My answer — that I'd had sweet and sour chicken balls, did that count — probably told her everything she needed to know about what she was working with.
I arrived in the dark. What I could see were these enormous luminous blocks everywhere: shopping centres, Wanda, Aeon, the lot. Not what I was expecting from a city in Fujian province. They took me to a hotel, not the nicest but bearable, and told me I'd be meeting the principal for dinner later. After the chicken feet conversation, I was already doing mental calculations about what I could safely eat.
The answer, as it turned out, was not much. The recruiter had told them I was allergic to fish. He had, very obviously, not passed that on. The restaurant they chose was in a seafood capital — because Fuzhou is a seafood capital — and it was a seafood restaurant. About 10 to 15 plates came out for four people. I ate the chicken and the beef noodles, which were rather spicy, and I learned my first proper lesson about China: Chinese food in China does not taste like Chinese food in the UK. Every city has its own style. But they do have one thing in common.
Most of it is very spicy.
Over dinner, the principal mentioned I'd be in the hotel for two days while they found me an apartment. Found me one. The recruiter had said there was accommodation sorted. There was not. I had £1,100 left in my bank account and no idea whether my card would even work in China, so the phrase "we'll take you round to look at some places" was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
The next morning, my teaching assistant Nana took me to five apartments. Nana was petite, very good at her job, and capable of a level of grumpiness that honestly scared me a little — even I was intimidated when she raised her voice, and people call me grumpy. But she was exactly who you wanted in your corner.
Every apartment we looked at had one thing in common: a squat toilet. I was in my 40s. I had never used one. I did not want to start. By the afternoon, I was told to choose from what I'd seen or take the last one they were about to show me. That final apartment was in a reasonably modern development, about five to seven minutes' walk from the school, which I liked. One room. A double bed, a settee, a fridge that could probably hold a chicken and a bottle of Coke, and a freezer with room for a bag of chips. No TV. And yes, a squat toilet with a shower directly above it.
"I wasn't impressed with doing it, but I had to. I was told there was nothing else I could do."
I signed the document. In China, that meant pressing a red thumbprint onto the paper. Then we went to open a bank account, which took almost no time at all: passport, housing document, school letter, done. I was also operating on a three-month tourist visa. I found out later that technically I should have had a working visa. I had not known this. If you are considering something similar now, heed the warning — especially in China, especially now.
That same afternoon they said: right, you're going to watch John. John who? John Hankin. Originally from Ireland, a legend in Fuzhou, and the teacher I was taking over from. I assumed I'd be observing one or two of his classes for a week or so before stepping in gradually.
I was very wrong.
I walked into his first class and he was like a magician. The children were doing everything he asked — flashcards, musical chairs, sentence relay, jumping through hoops. He had the whole thing completely under control. I stood there thinking: what have I got myself into? I have no idea what I'm going to do.
That evening he told me he was moving to a public school. "I finally got a proper job," he said, with a huge grin. I asked what it was like here. He said, "You'll get used to it." Then he told me I'd be shadowing him for three days and he was leaving on Saturday.
Three days. That was the training.
Do one game every week, the same game for every class. Change the one that doesn't work.
He handed me a notebook with the games that always worked. His advice was simple: use one game per week, run it across every class, swap out anything that fails. That system carried me through two and a half years. Stick to what works. Never retry a failure just because you think maybe this time it'll land. Give them what they already know they enjoy, and the classes take care of themselves.
My first night in the new apartment, I got back around 10 o'clock. Walking up, I noticed one door opened without me touching it. That was strange. I got to my room. The door was already open. Sitting on my sofa was a young woman, screaming intermittently. A man had run in behind her.
It turned out she was the previous tenant. The landlord hadn't returned her deposit, which Nana later told me was quite common. She was not leaving until she got it back. She didn't speak English. My neighbour spoke pidgin English. So there was only one option: ring Nana.
"I've been in China for less than a week and someone's going to call the police."
Nana arrived, calmed the situation down, and told the woman that the school would guarantee the deposit if the landlord didn't pay up. Crisis over. The man who'd come in that night ended up becoming one of my good friends. That's how it works sometimes.
The deposit issue followed me for the rest of my time in China, by the way. I never once got a housing deposit back. There was always a reason. What I eventually learned to do was give notice, let them expect a final month's rent, and simply not pay it — because they already had the deposit and they were never giving it back. Friends of mine did the same. You figure it out.
Squat toilet. Stranger on the sofa. Three days of training before taking on 10 to 12 classes a week. A seafood dinner when I'm allergic to fish. £1,100 in the bank with no idea when the first paycheque was coming.
At the time I was, if not young, then naive. I'd never been anywhere like it. Walking to work one morning and finding 20 men doing aerobics outside the hairdresser's opposite the school — that was a daily routine for them. Getting tapped on the shoulder by strangers asking for a photo because Fuzhou was a tier-three city and they hadn't seen many foreigners. A friend had warned me they'd treat me like a movie star. He was right.
China was always an adventure. Something was always happening around the corner. Looking back now, most of it makes me smile. Back then, I was just trying to keep up.
