The ball finally dropped that some readers wanted to contact me and were having to leave comments on my post. So I finally created a contact email address. It is:

admin(at)jameshuang.co.uk

All spam, junk email, phising scams are welcome. They will be automatically deleted by gmail. (Am I asking for trouble here?)

I apologise for the lack of blog updating. I’ve had a combination of apathy and blogaphy. Here is a two minute update on my life in the past 5 weeks.

• Monday July 14th – Arrive back in the UK in a daze.
• Week 1 – Open my mail. Check through my bank statements. Spend hours in front of a spreadsheet to find that I have not much money. Catch up with friends. Find out that my badminton level has stayed the same – bad to OK.
• Week 2 – Paris! Holiday for a week with my family. Highly recommended.
• Week 3 – Catch an infection in my lower left leg. I lie down for a week and sleep a lot.
• Week 4 – Go back to work at my old workplace. Lots of filing and typing. Enjoy the British summer – no mosquitoes, no scorching heat and daily rain.
• Week 5 – Realise that I am moving to London soon to start a new job. Panic buy lots of distasteful shirts. Mum points out that I don’t own any double duvets, duvet covers or sheets. I find out they cost a fortune in Britain, despite just being cotton sheets sewn together.I go to Liverpool Frontline Church for the last time.
• Week 6 – I get sick of shopping and resign myself to being badly dressed. The office buys cheesecake to commemorate my leaving.

Life is good, though not so dangerously exciting as China.

I got requested to write a response to my culture lesson a month ago. I’m finally getting around to it. At the start of the class was an activity where students stood to the right of the class if they agreed with a statement and on the left if they did not. A fellow expat/teacher/blogger called Meg warned me that Chinese students were prone to the herding effect, which means they would all stand at one side of the class. Fortunately, this didn’t happen.

The lesson itself was a little difficult to teach because using a projector to show the slides stifled discussion. It would have been better to print hand-outs and break up the class into small groups.

To end the lesson, I asked the following questions:

• Was Susan (the British-born Chinese girl) British or Chinese?
• Where should a BBC live?

The general consensus was that she was mostly British, which is what I would agree with. One significant remnant of Chinese culture that I have inherited is an immense weight of obligation to my parents. All non-deadbeat parents sacrifice for their children, but Chinese parents go the extra mile, with children strapped to their backs and no shoes on their feet. This, plus other idiosyncrasies, means that BBCs produce their own culture.

I was slightly shocked to find one student strongly suggesting that BBCs should live in China. It wasn’t my fault that I was born outside the Motherland. I can’t even contemplate living outside Britain.

Now, I am really interested in knowing what the Mainlander’s attitude is towards Chinese born overseas.  If anyone else is interested then please send me a large cheque to sponsor my PHD.