Jonna's China blog: May 19th - Meeting the genius

It was hard to get out of bed at 7 am this morning, but I had a busy day ahead of me, so nothing to pray for.

I caught a cab to CRI (I directed the taxi driver with my great Chinese as I, when I saw the building, went: ‘yo’ -which means right. Luckily the building wasn’t on the left as I had forgotten that word)

At CRI I did two phone interviews. One with a very friendly sexologist, and one with the (now cured from his cold) Health Dr. Both interviews went really well and way over the time limit. But it’s hard not to get chatty when people are telling you so much interesting stuff!

After those interviews we had to head off to a language school located in West Beijing, in order to interview a very well known teacher called Zhang Hao. Mr Zhang is a former ‘whiz kid’, today known as a ‘genius teacher’. He entered university at the age of 15 and started teaching when he was 19! Meeting this guy was something I had been looking forward to for a long time.

We had estimated about 20 minutes for the taxi ride, but when we got into the taxi (that almost jammed ppl in order to get to us) we were met by a very friendly ‘hello how are you I am a driver for the Olympic games!’ taxi driver, that wanted nothing more than to chat to us. What then followed was a very interesting drive. Chinese taxi drivers are normally not very talkative, unless you are Chinese or in case they are lost. But this guy, I am telling you -he was a shocker! He talked and talked and was so enthusiastic about learning English, that he basically wanted to tell us everything he knew!

(As part of Beijing’s preparations for the Olympic Games, a dictionary of 500 useful English words have been given to all the cities taxi drivers. It is then up to them if they want to take it further and learn more.)

This guy was definitely going for gold as he told us everything he did, all in cute, taxi-like phrases like: ‘turning leeeeft!’ (every time we turned left) or ‘going straight (when we were going straight)’ He even read from the English advertisement billboards for us, and asked us to describe the difference between ‘plaza’ and ‘palace’.

We had a great time, chatting away, and Mr taxi driver obviously got a bit too carried away, as he eventually missed our exit and had to turn off the meter and take us back to where we were supposed to go. But if I understood him right, it was with great pleasure he spent those extra 10 minutes with us, just to tell us ‘a white car, a green car are passing’ and other useful stuff like that.

When we finally made it to the school I was relieved and excited about the interview with Mr Zhang. What I hadn’t really counted on though, was that I, as a Swedish journalist, was going to make minor headlines at this school. The school headmaster (who was already armed with a camera) took my visit very seriously, and she walked us to the class I went to in order to watch Mr Zhang while he was giving a lecture. In the short break, she picked three kids that reluctantly agreed on answering my questions about being Zhang’s students (this wasn’t planned!). As I got the kids to lighten up, they were actually a lot of fun, and in the end I managed to get them to smile while I photographed them.

The headmaster then recruited another teacher (a colleague to Mr Zhang) that I had to interview about his opinion of the genius teacher. (Maybe taking it a little bit too far?) But he was nice and stayed on to listen to my interview.

Actually, I had a minor audience when I finally met with Mr Zhang. Then followed a loooong chat with Mr Genius, that certainly knew what to chat about, and definitely gave me some great answers.
We spent almost an hour on our interview, and I had to stop the audience from applauding in the intervals between the questions. -Doubtlessly a very influential man, this Mr Zhang.

After this interview I was free to go home -and, trust me, I was looking forward to that one! I was going to catch a taxi by myself, and hailed the first one I saw. I showed him my paper of directions, and he looked at it for a very long time, before he started to talk to me in Chinese. Telling this man where I was from or that I was happy to meet him wasn’t going to solve this particular situation, so I eventually called Panda to let her explain the directions to him.

At this stage, I was in the back of the car, and Mr Driver talked to Panda for a long time before he handed me the phone back and started the car. I noticed that Panda was still on the line, and when I asked her if everything was cool, she yelled: ‘Jonna, get out of the car! He doesn’t know where he is going!’ Oh, right?! And you are telling me this NOW?! I literally threw myself out of the car, and landed (not very gracefully) on the ground. The taxi wroomed off and I got up, brushed the dirt out of my clothes, ignored the curious stares and giggles from ppl around me, and hailed a new cab.

This guy nodded sympathetically to my notes, and then took me straight home, without a word. For a short moment, I considered telling him he was my new, personal hero.