And from your observation, is it true that more people there have cell phones and multi-functional cell phones than phones in their own home and computers?
JONAS: Probably, I think there are more cell phones in China. Home computers aren’t very common now although more and more people are getting them but so the internet café is a big business there. Many people don’t really buy computers. Maybe just like cars, only the wealthy people have it.

And the cars that you do see there, what type of cars are they? Who is the manufacturer?
JONAS: Even the cars that I know there, the label of the car is in Chinese characters. There are a lot of Volkswagens. I think the one we call Volkswagen Jetta, they have there. They have a different name for it– that’s what most of the taxis are. They have Chinese-made cars; a lot of them that we don’t see here. A few people have American or Japanese cars; they are considered to be the best. I think that everybody wants an American car although many people in America like the Japanese cars. You don’t see big SUVs like here. Almost like Europe, they certainly have smaller cars. And you don’t see many old cars when you’re out because people haven’t had cars for very long. The cars may be two or three year old cars over there.

I want to ask you about your teaching. The schools that you’ve taught at, do the students have the equipment, the facilities that they need in order to have a good learning experience?
JONAS: I think they do not. If I want to make copies of a paper and give it to all my students, I can’t do that– it’s too much money for paper. They say that I can make copies for everybody only one time a semester.

So how do you handle that?
JONAS: As a teacher I have to work with what I have and I don’t have high regards for the education system. Teaching at a college, I always feel like I’m teaching high school students. I’ve talked to the other foreign teachers at that school and they all think the same thing. One time I was a with French colleague of mine and we were talking to two Chinese students in their twenties about the solar system. Both of them did not know the names of the other planets in the solar system in Chinese.

And have you had experienced with the healthcare system there?
JONAS: I have been to the hospitals there and I never want to be in one again. There was a time when I was living in Kunming– I had laryngitis actually some called tonsillitis. Basically I had a problem with my throat for about a month and some of the times I was really sick with a fever and a bad headache during a few months and I went through four different doctors. Most of the doctors wanted to give me an IV, which they do for almost everything there, this is when I was teaching in a middle school and I went to the school medic first and I walked inside in the 10 or so beds, students laying in most of them, just as in any American school, students who didn’t want to go to class– so all the students had an IV in them but I am guessing they had a headache or a cold or something they give them an IV.

Anyway, I chose to go to what is said to be the best hospital in Guilin. Which is in a city of four million people. I went to the best hospital in the city and gosh, there were very disgusting details. The bathrooms in this hospital don’t have soap which is like the bathrooms everywhere in this country, except the airports. In the lobby, there is a big no-smoking sign and as I was waiting, a doctor walked by smoking. It is just a couple of things, but it was a disgusting experience for me. If you go into the consulting room where the doctor checks you out, there is no privacy. You go in and all the other patients are also coming in kind of just waiting around you so they can get checked out and it’s not like the system here where you have an appointment. It’s all walk-ins– so you walk in and everybody kind of crowds around you until you are finished and they try to get in. The first three doctors that I went to wanted to give me an IV and I didn’t want one. They gave me different medicines and couldn’t find the problem. I didn’t get better and finally I went to a specialist, as they called it, and he had an medical degree and this was the first doctor that spoke English and he actually spoke really good English. He had worked in Africa before and this guy was great; he knew the problem and he the told me to drink some green tea and gave me a different type of medicine and I got better, which was great.

Well, good that you got well.
JONAS: That’s for sure.

Thank your for sharing your perspective.