Hooray! It's exam time!

I remember thinking when I was a kid - or maybe even when I was a student (a long time ago, either way) - how wonderful it would be to have no more exams ever again. Or how wonderful it'd be to dot that final fullstop on that final sheet of the final exam ever.

Of course you never mark that actual moment in reality; it's only in the future that you realise that you have indeed done your last one.

But this week has made me look back on that thought and really appreciate the fact that, yes, I'm bloody privileged to have got all that business out of the way now.

Not so for the kids at CDFLS. They should be used to it really since they're constantly tested (not to mention the fact that they have lessons from eight in the morning till as late as nine at night). The Juniors actually have tests every Sunday when they return from an all too brief weekend trip home (although they'll have spent most of the time doing their homework even there; and many kids' homes are too far away to make getting away viable so they're stuck in school permanently).

But no, you don't get used to exams do you? And it affects different people in different ways. In the run up to exam week I had classes who were completely shattered from all the work they were doing, others were more fractious, others grumpy or just subdued.

The best one for me was having a fight break out in a class last week. Two lads on the other side of the room just suddenly launched themselves at each other, fists flying everywhere. I literally had to tear them apart before reseating them in opposite corners and continuing the lesson (which, funnily enough, went well from then on, some tensions seemingly released).

Exam time means something else entirely for us Teaching Assistants. It's a chance to relax and get away for a couple of days. It'd have been great to run those two days into a long weekend but, hey, life's not like that, is it? So some of us decided to take a day trip to Qing Cheng Shan, the mountain home of Daoism about 60 kilometres west of Chengdu.

At just 1600 metres, it's not the tallest of the Daoist sacred mountains but it still gives you fantastic views across yet more mountains from its templed peak.

Daoism? Taoism? Hey, it doesn't really matter because the whole philosophy is about 'going with the flow'. More than that, it's about getting in tune with nature and Man's place in it - or, more specifically Man being a part of it. The key word there (did you spot it?) was 'philosophy'. When Lao Zi mounted his water buffalo 2600 years ago and disappeared into Tibet (and, better still, into solitude) all he left behind was a meagre few pages as a summary of his thoughts on The Way of Power. Or, basically, what he thought life was all about.

It was a philosophical treatise, not really a religion at all.

Nonetheless, Qing Cheng Shan - and many more so-called 'sacred mountains' - are dotted with elegant shrines (and sometimes full blown temples) among the trees, the rocks, the springs and waterfalls. I've yet to work out why the shrines and temples are necessary at all when there's no god involved and who one is actually praying to but I'm still a novice at this. Can I get back to you on that?

One thing's for sure: I'd never make a good pilgrim. Walk up a mountain - even along beautiful paths cut over centuries among towering trees and greenness everywhere? Hell, no. To the cable car! We did, however, walk the last few hundred metres to the Shangqing Gong (which features calligraphy by Chiang Kaishek oddly enough) and the tower which crowns the summit (featuring a gaudy twelve metre tall golden buffalo which wouldn't be out of place on a carnival float).

Further gaudy gifts are available from the concessions in each shrine and, as a westerner, you're pounced on and harangued to buy buy buy. I spotted the calligraphy that tops and tails this blog entry and, even after bargaining, am sure I paid through the nose for it. From what I gather, though nothing is straightforward in translating Chinese characters to western meaning, it's to do with endurance, patience and perseverance: just what you need at exam time.

Exclusive: the Pat & Rachel tapes

So I said to my English teacher colleague, Rachel, "Put on your blouse".

Surprised, she replied "I can put on my blouse. I can put my blouse on. I can put it on."

"Put it on," I repeated. Just to make sure.

For years to come at Chengdu Foreign Languages School, students will be torn between (or totally confused by) a Great Yarmouth 'Ba-r-th' and a Leeds 'B-a-th', a southern 'Gl-arse' and a northern 'Gl-ass', now that Rachel and I have spent four weeks laboriously recording 120 lessons' worth of repetition dialogues for them.

"Can we stop now?" "Yes, we can. We can stop now. Yes, now we can stop. Yes, now it's time to stop."

Back to school

I can write the Chinese character for “I” now. It’s only taken three months to manage this. And now there’s a mere 4,999 more characters to have a ‘working’ vocabulary. We have lessons every Wednesday at 9 o’clock; the lessons are good but I can’t help thinking that once a week just isn’t going to be enough (especially if I don’t do my homework). This week I’m meant to study the sentence “I teach at Chengdu Foreign Languages School”, part of which you can see in the picture. I have to admit there’s something satisfying about getting the characters right. It’s not just the technicality of the letter (like knowing the difference between a ‘b’ and a ‘d’) but when you do it right it simply feels right and looks beautiful.

It’s helping in restaurants too. Gradually I’m starting to recognise the odd character here and there so I can, for instance, pick out a chicken, pork or beef dish. It might be chicken soup or beef testicle but at least I’m not totally bemused by a Chinese menu. I can spot the character for ‘big’ as in ‘big reductions’ or ‘big portions’ which is handy; and I know the character for China which, as you’d expect, you see everywhere. Knowing the difference between ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gents’ is useful too.

Speaking-wise, I’m terribly lazy. If there’s someone else with me I’ll let them do the talking so I don’t practise as much as I should. I really need to get out on my own and make myself talk (hell, I don’t say much at the best of times – even in English!). But come January we get six weeks off and I’ll be travelling properly on my own for the first time since I’ve been here.

Can’t wait.