During my 18 months in China one of my main employers was the Henan college of Finance and Taxation. The college was situated several miles outside of the city of Zhengzhou.The students were mainly 18-21 years of age and I was only around 21 years old myself. The college taught various degrees including tourism and business. It seemed to be students who were capable enough to enter into the prestigious universities such as Zhengzhou university or Tsinghua in Beijing for example. The campus itself was quite large with a sports field, lots of dormitories, a large canteen, teacher’s offices and lecture halls/classrooms. The majority of the students were from the smaller cities of Henan or from rural areas so had very little money. There were a few Zhengzhou natives who seemed a bit more confident but not many. There were all sorts of differences between this college and my own home university. Every morning I seem to recall there being group exercise, which involved thousands of students doing exercise and stretches in formation to strange Chinese Communist music (by our Western standards). I even observed this unusual activity one day at the side. One day I observed what seemed to be an army company mingling with the students in the sports field. The soldiers were in uniform and just hanging out with the students, separately across the field. It was a staff organised activity to encourage bond building between the two groups I was later told.

Similar to living in China in general, there was a huge volume of students at the campus at all times. The students told me 6 people shared a dormitory room. Their living space was extremely limited. I ate in the canteen a few times. The food was extremely cheap but the food was overly bland and not impressive to me. At the gates of the campus there was a steady flow of students to and flow. No student owned a car so there was not much of a car park. Most either used the buses or had a basic bicycle or basic ebike.

The most memorable part of that place however was the Chinese students themselves. They were very curious about Scotland. I put up a selection of English/Scottish names that I knew from growing up and they all selected one each and I referred to them using it. Despite their difficult living conditions the students were generally in very good spirits in class and were very enthusiastic learners. The classes were packed with as much as 40 adult students so it was sometimes a bit chaotic. In terms of activity, we had debates on lots of modern issues such as abortion, euthanasia. We also had speeches. Of course I had been warned to steer clear of politics (like Taiwan or the censorship of the internet) by some of the students and I very wisely adhered to that advice. There were brave and extroverted students in class who often spoke in reply to questions posed by me and then had back and forth discussions with me. These students tended to rapidly improve their oral English. The students had to be prepared to be laughed at by the rest of the class but ultimately the atmosphere was very good natured.

My boss was a man called Mr Wu who seemed very hard working and serious. He was in his 40s. He was the one who originally scouted me out and offered the job. I went to his office a few times for various reasons over my time there. He had a basic sofa bed in his office since sometimes he didn’t make it home to his wife over all the long hours.

There were other non Chinese teaching in other classrooms. There were a few Americans (and at least one Brit) teaching in their own style but really I didn’t have much interaction with them.

When I finally left the Henan College of Finance and Taxation I missed the job. It was a large part of my life in Zhengzhou.