Suihua

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Suihua is a small third or fourth tier city in Heilongjiang province, around 100km north of Harbin. When I arrived in Harbin, I found that I would not be working in that city but in Suihua, so after a few days in Harbin I was on the move to another city, on arriving at the accommodation there was a problem and a long discussion was held between the owners of the apartment and the people escorting me to my new home. After a wait I was finally shown into the apartment and began to unpack before being taken to the school where I would begin teaching the next day.

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That evening the owners of the apartment were back and a long heated discussion continued long into the night, during a lull in the negotiations I was advised to collect my things together again as it was likely I would not be staying here. Sure enough first thing the next morning we were on a bus heading back to Harbin. I later found out the disagreement was over the rent for the apartment, despite a contract being signed the owners wanted to charge a higher rent.

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Once back in Harbin, I was assured that I would not be returning to Suihua and my employers would find me a school in Harbin. So a few days later I began doing some demonstration classes to find new schools. A few weeks later and I was busy working at several schools across Harbin and every Friday I had to go to Suihua for 5 classes. It was a horrendous day for me.

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My Friday routine would begin on the Thursday afternoon, the school I worked in on that afternoon was close to the express bus station so after that class I would go and buy my bus ticket for the next day. If I waited until the next morning to buy my ticket the bus might be full.

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On the Friday morning I would get up at 5am and after eating some breakfast and gather together what I needed for my lunch I would head off to get the local bus into the city, that bus service started at 5.30. Maybe an hour later I would arrive at the express bus station and get on the first bus to Suihua that left at 7am, it was a two hour bus journey, I would often be sleeping for most of the journey. After completing my classes at around 4pm I would head to the bus station in Suihua and usually be able to leave on the bus departing at 4.30 arriving back in Harbin around 2 hours later, then it was just a matter of getting on the local bus to go back to my home, feeling exhausted. During a week I was teaching for 26 hours and the time spent on buses travelling to and from schools was about 26 hours.

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By this time I had given Suihua the name of sewer, it was a very dirty heavily polluted city. I was so happy that I only had to endure it for a few hours each week and not live there.

At the end of the semester there were some schools that I would be happy to return to, others I would be happy to never see again. One school wanted me to return and increase my hours, my employers would not give a guarantee that this would happen I felt that I would have to continue with my weekly trek to Suihua so when an opportunity arose of a vacancy in Sichuan province I jumped at the chance and never to take the Suihua bus again.