Lou in Yiwu

I just got back early yesterday morning from Yiwu (pronounced ee-oo) China where I spent 7 days teaching English to kids in grade school and middle school, though all my classes were for the older middle school kids as well as a handful of adults. It took about 12 hours by bus to get down to Yiwu from Linyi. I would have taken the train but during Spring Fesitval, which finally ended this last Sunday, it is nearly impossible to get a ticket on the train.

During the winter and summer breaks Li Yang Crazy English company conducts English camps for kids that I got hooked up with through one of the other teachers here at Linyi Normal University. It was pretty interesting as the method is very different and somewhat controversial, but from my perspective the level of the kid’s English was quite high for their age and whether this was due to the Crazy English process I can’t be sure. At any rate they all were pretty fun and it was a part of China I haven’t seen yet. Here are a few pictures of the 80 plus kids that were at the camp.

This last one is of Bella and I. We were the two foreign teachers at the camp. Bella is a University student from South Africa who is studying medicine at a University a few hours away from Yiwu. The the caption “Wall-Eye-Knee” refers to a joke the kids played on me where they first pointed to a wall and asked “what is this?” and then to their eyes and knees and had me say those body parts as well, then all together fast, which in Chinese sounds like “I love you”, pretty funny. Now Bella speaks pretty good Chinese, in fact she speaks 5 languages, making me feel a bit like the typical language challenged American.

The city of Yiwu is also very interesting, several years ago they built a massive complex where international buyers can come and see just about any small commodity that China produces. A quote from the Yiwu China Commodity Market website says this about it;

Crowned as “a sea of commodities and a paradise for shoppers”, Yiwu of china boasts an aggregate market floor area of 2.6 million square meters (29 million square feet) with 53,000 booths and 160,000 persons engaging in business. The market gathers 320,000 varieties of goods of 1,502 categories from 34 trades (note: there are 500,000 varieties of goods in the world as released by the UN).

It truly was quite amazing place, as an example the first floor (3 floors) of building #1 (3 buildings) has hundreds and hundreds of booths each approximately 20′x20′ in size that have on display just about every toy that China produces. Talk about a kids paradise, I wish I was 6 years old again, and that was just one category of the 1,502 categories. In fact I broke down and bought a cool electric RC Helicopter as shown here;

This is a high quality helicopter that is pretty much indestructible that came with a 3 channel remote control, which I paid 220 Yuan or approximately $32.00. I don’t know how much this would retail for in the USA but I’m pretty sure it would be a whole lot more than 32 bucks.

Yiwu also has a fairly sizable Arabic/Muslim community, with many middle eastern restaurants and coffee shops. The following pictures are of wall mural that was just outside the big market complex along the busy street that was hand painted illustrating the old China that is giving way to the new economy.

Yiwu is quite different from Linyi, where I am now, as there were very few people riding bikes with most people driving cars or using mass transit system, which definitely reflects a much higher standard of living. They are also quite use to having many foreigners around as most never paid me much mind as I was walking around town as opposed to here where I always get people giving me the double take and a few saying hello after I pass by.

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