Simon Greenall is one of the most successful authors in the Macmillan English list. He has sent in this latest briefing from one of the farthest reaches of our marketing efforts and I thought you'd be interested. Thanks, Simon.
We’re in Heilongjiang province, in north-eastern China, where the regional Ministry of Education has adopted New Standard English for Senior High Schools, the textbook series published jointly by Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP), Beijing, and Macmillan Education. We’re here to do some teacher training sessions, organised by the Ministry. It’s a substantial adoption too, 200,000 copies of each book every year, so over eleven books ... well, you do the math. Other provinces, both larger and smaller, are already using the series, more will do so next year, we hope, and at last I‘m beginning to understand the concept of critical mass.
The capital city is Harbin, home of the Ice Festival, although it’s now midsummer, and around 30 degrees most of the time. More importantly, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the hometown of Ivy (Wang Jianbo), my friend and our director of textbooks for the schools department of the press. She is directly responsible for the books which sell around 50 million copies sold every year (some kind of record?), and is justifiably proud to be returning home to give a presentation on the project for which she has worked so hard.
In Harbin, we have an audience of 500 teachers cramped together in auditorium which is steaming at 8am in the morning, so you can imagine what it feels like when I finish my presentation three hours later. They all have their Macmillan/FLTRP textbooks in front of them. Strange to think that books which were written with authors in small towns in the UK end up here, so far away.
In the evening, after the usual welcome dinner, we go shopping late in the evening in Harbin’s main pedestrian streets. The Russian Far Eastern border is not so far away, so Harbin has many Russian-style buildings, including Saint Sophia, an Orthodox Cathedral, and shops selling Russian goods. We then walk along a causeway far out into the Songhua River, at this point two kilometres across, and watch hot air lanterns drift into the night sky over the water.
One feature which astonishes me about China is the size of the cities, an impression which usually strikes me only as we arrive on the outskirts, as we catch a 180 degree glimpse of the built-up area.. Harbin was described to me as a small city but turns out to have over a population of 8 million.
The next day we travel six hours by train to Jiamusi, a city of half a million further along the Songhua River. How could I have remained so unaware, in the comfortable west, of such huge centres of population in China?
Jiamusi on a Sunday afternoon is relaxed, full of people enjoying themselves on the boardwalk alongside the river. People stare at me – there are not many Caucasian visitors – but in the most kindly, friendly way. One older woman greets me in Chinese and Russian, “Ni hao, tovaritch!” (Hello, comrade!).
Every day lunch and dinner follow a very similar pattern. According to socio-cultural conventions, there is only one place for me to sit, which is for the guest of honour, and I comply obediently. But there is always a ritual tussle for the second place (“No, you must sit next to our guest” ... “No, I insist it must be you!”). We sit down, wait for the food, and begin drinking. We all negotiate the choice between Great Wall Red Wine (excellent), local firewater (no opinion, can’t drink it) and local beer (Harbin beer is hoppy, light and more-ish, Jiamusi beer is even better).
Then the toasts follow. The first toast is always by the host, and everyone joins in. We raise our glasses, tap tap on the lazy Susan turntable and touch glasses. The next toast is usually from the host to me, the honoured guest, Gambay! and continues with short speeches to everyone around the table, thanking them for their co-operation, respecting their professionalism, welcoming their contribution, admiring their good looks ...Then each person shows their glass to each other after the toast, to show how much they have finished, usually the whole glass, although they keep their eye on the other person to make sure they don’t make them drink too much
Well, I don’t drink much alcohol, and despite two years of Chinese classes, most of all this goes over my head. So, from time to time, basking in the warm glow of friendship but unable to keep up, I lose concentration and sink into my own thoughts. I snaffle some more food from the lazy Susan ... thinking ... it’s 11am in the UK, my son back home has got his last A level exam today, maybe I should text good luck wishes ... and suddenly, I realise I’m the object of yet another toast of welcome, and I’m back into action with another glass .. tap, tap, Gambay!.
The turntable turns, the food keeps coming, and we eat and drink, and promise everlasting friendship. And we mean it.
Next morning in Jiamusi, Ivy and I give presentations to 300 people, The same warm feelings of welcome and greeting, of kindness and interest.
And so it goes.
We travel back from Jiamusi to Harbin on a butt-numbing coach, faster than the train, but good fun. We stop for ten minutes in the middle of the journey, the road-side food sellers are waiting with fruit, tortillas-style wraps filled with vegetables, kebabs and corn on the cob. Ivy buys two corns cobs, tells me to eat slowly as they may hurt my stomach, and the coach sets off again. We’re watching a Jackie Chan movie on the coach video as we get back to the big city.
In Harbin we have lunch in a Russian restaurant – we could be in central Europe – and we go then to the airport, for my flight back to a steamy Beijing. Ivy has two more weeks on the road, I’m back to the Beijing office for more meetings. And we say goodbye.
Seven years of working in China, with Macmillan and FLTRP ..... When I’m there, I feel that I’m in a safe and kind society, where the values of family, of hospitality, of respect for others’ views, are strong. We can learn a lot from “Ni hao, tovaritch!”