Fuyang富阳, my new home in China

Now I'm living in Fuyang 富阳, Zhejiang province 浙江. It's not the Fuyang the city in Anhui that everyone first thinks when they hear Fuyang. It's a small city, for a Chinese city, that is actually under Hangzhou's 杭州 jurisdiction. Fuyang is divided by the Fuchun river that runs though the city into Hangzhou, and makes a really nice riverfront on the northern bank. And It's actually a pretty good deal that Fuyang is part of Hangzhou because they have buses that go to Hangzhou all day non-stop and they only cost 7 yuan, about $1.15, and take about an hour to get there. So I live close enough to the big city to go shopping for western stuff if I need but I don't have to live in the busy big city, and I don't get too spoiled by having western stuff all the time. It also means that Fuyang is a very wealthy city, the complete opposite of Tongzi. Zhejiang is the 2nd wealthiest province in China, and Hangzhou is a very wealthy city of Zhejiang. You can see people driving Ferarris and Porches as their everyday car. And we've seen some Lamborghinis, Maserattis, and Hummers. This is definitely the other face of China.

Hangzhou is known for West Lake. It's supposed to be 'heaven on Earth' according to the Chinese proverb, 上有天堂下有苏杭. It's the end of the Grand canal 大運河 from Beijing, that was built between 604 and 609 C.E. and has many beautiful smaller canals throughout the city. It's also famous for many other things like Longjin Tea, and Hickory nuts, and West Lake sour fish, and it's also one of the 4 Chinese silk cities. All this means is that Hangzhou is a huge tourist destination and the shop owners are really good at ripping off foreigners.

Hangzhou Silk market. Hangzhou West Lake.







Anyways, I feel pretty lucky about finding a job here. It's exactly what I was looking for when I was searching for schools but when I first found this school it didn't sound like what I wanted. I'm working in a regular high school, but they call it a 'key' high school because there are so many good students in this area that it's a difficult high school to get into. In China the students have to test into high school (or have the 'good relations' 有好的关系) since high school isn't mandatory and is therefore only preparing the students for college entrance exams高考. Half the students graduating from this high school go to 'key' Chinese universities, basically Ivy League schools, which is very good when looking at how many students there are in China and that there are only a handful of key universities. There are 2 campuses for my school, I'm in the South River High School 江南中学 where they have a middle school and grades 1 and 2 of high school. Then there is the FuZhong 富中 main campus for grade 3 students and the AP center, which prepares about 130 students for the SATS and TOEFL so that they can study in the States.

They've done a lot of work to make the South River campus look really nice, and it is. It's also fully equiped with projectors and internet, the labs are very well stocked, and they even have heat in the classrooms (it's a big deal for a Chinese high school in the south).

My apartment is basic, Chinese style, but enough for me. And it's a real apartment this time, which means I have a front door not just a gate, and my kitchen is inside my house not in the hallway, lol (I miss Tongzi). I also have a small laundry room with a lot of windows, I put a table and some chairs out there and it's just like a back balcony.

My first weekend here I went with the teachers in the AP center to this small island in the Fuchun river for dinner. And I even made a few friends in the AP center.