China Blossoms

The last few weeks have seen the greyness of the Shiz punctured by emerging blossoms, pink, white and a shocking, fake looking magenta. Coupled with the sudden, and delightful, occurance of blue skies, it induced the shocking realisation that Shijiazhuang could be, and occasionally is, a beautiful city. I have got so used to thinking of its ugliness and pollution as compeletly inevitable, but there is no reason why it couldn't become a pleasant, modern garden city.

I took advantage of a particularly pleasant day last week to go and photo the splendid displays of blossom on this tree in the school.

Whilst I was snapping away, I got talking with some of my senior 2 students who were on duty at the front entrance. They are now seriously thinking about which universities they want to apply to, and which subjects they want to study, and I had an interesting chat with them about it. The girl on the left wants to work in a bank, but her parents and teacher want her to become a teacher. The girl in the middle wants to be a Chinese, English or history teacher, and is hoping to get into a prestigious teacher training university in Beijing. The girl on the left wants to study international business. This is a reasonable reflection of the ambitions of my senior students. The two most popular career choices seem to be business and teaching, followed by the army, medicine, and law.