Thursday, July 15, 2021

Dispatches from Chengdu Abdiel Leroy

 Abdiel Leroy taught  years ago in China, and precisely at the Chengdu University Of Technology..

In his latest ebook Dispatches


from Chengdu tells to the readers his chinese adventure starting with the names of his students, for practicity transformed in english ones and inspired by Leroy's passion for Shakespeare. 

He had his own apartment and the decription sounded very good. 

For encouraging his students Leroy organized moments where he shared some prizes for a reason or another; they could be books of Oscar Wilde or differently postcards.

Although China is a communist state, education of children is not free, and to Abdiel this fact was a sort of shock considering that in UK there is free education when students are little, and no, Uk is not a communist country.

There were problems when some students complained that it was too difficult to memorize words in english.


Students can't access to printers so Leroy prepared to his students a lot and a lot of material for studying.


The most ironic fact was that a girl was introduced to him: she should have received her graduation in english, but she didn't understand a word of what said Leroy and the conversation was impossible. Why is like that? Asked Leroy frustrated.


Moments of tentions appeared also when he tried to involved chinese students in theatrical moments and they complained with the people of the university, while another time a student said him that, simply, she didn't like poetry, and neither literature. The question of Leroys was why she attended courses she didn't like at all for 6 years.


This book is plenty of these anedocts, and moments of existence with these students.

It's a brief reading, just 100 pages, but intriguing and interesting if you want to discover more chinese culture and the problematics that a western citizen can meet living there.


Highly recommended.


I thank Abdiel Leroy for the copy of the book.



Anna Maria Polidori  


No comments: