Wednesday November 07 xxxx
Dianne arrived yesterday and we are off tomorrow for Lijiang in mountainousYunnan province. The scenery will be gorgeous and part of it is a UNESCO heritage site. We’ll be back on the 13th. I’ve been having plagiarism problems with some of my students. I find chunks of their essays on the Internet, and they claim it’s something they remembered! Even the mistakes. One said that the requirements of Chinese and foreign teachers are different: his Chinese English teachers encouraged him to remember and use sentences that he liked. I asked some folks about tuition. Different majors cost more or less. My informant said that a business major costs 10,000 RMB per semester ($1 = 7.5 RMB). A med student said hers is 10,000 a year. Someone else said his was 4200, and that a few years ago it was 2000. A dorm room costs just 1500 a year. (The dorms are very basic–no lounges, no cooking facilities. Some rooms have six beds, i.e., bunkbeds, some only two.) Most get the money from their parents, or some from bank loans, and there are some scholarships for those who can’t afford it. I also met two people who want to move to Australia, who said that there are many Chinese in Australia now. Australia requires that Chinese immigrants have a needed skill and that they pass an English test. There’s a point system. Doesn’t the U.S. have some kind of point system for legal immigrants as well” This is something I should know. Look forward to some gorgeous pictures from Lijiang (or to ensure that they’re gorgeous, search the web). Jane
posted Wednesday November xxxx