Before last night's excursion into Hu-wei town to check out the dead (but surprisingly svelte) pigs, the huge karaoke stages, and the candy-flinging dragon, I met a Chinese teacher friend of Renee's, who immediately got embroiled in a serious discussion with Jo about the Taiwanese approach to high school education.

Jo, a fellow Brit, is pretty vehemently opposed to the lack of childhood (as we would understand it anyway) that the kids here seem to experience. Namely, they go to school at some unGodly hour in the morning, finish school, and often as not get immediately whisked away to a Bushiban (cram school) for extra schooling until mid-evening - this may be study of languages, science, music or whatever their problem subject(s) may be. This extra study regularly happens on Saturdays and Sunday too.

(Note - Japanese & South Korean kids I'm told, have it much worse.)

You see, for said kids to move from Junior to Senior high school (around the age of 13/14-ish), they must pass all their tests, then the same to get to University and so on. Because everything is so test-orientated (and you thought England was bad for that... try tests on the weekend and every other evening at the Bushiban!), kids are whisked through subjects in normal school, with the schools (according to Jo at least) almost relying on the Bushibans to follow up what they don't have time to teach in full.

Let's take science as an example. As we know, dear readers, back in Blighty, science at school is a varied (and, okay I admit it, sometimes interesting) mix of lecture and assorted explosions/small fires described as 'experiments'. While these, to my memory, usually resulted in many a minor catastrophe (so much so that my fondest reminiscence is of ignoring these completely, opting instead to walk around with a fistful of burning 'splints' pretending I ran my own cult), they did at times put all the boring stuff into some kind of context and aid interactive learning (sorry, that was a bit textbook-sounding eh?). In Taiwan? You're a parrot (due to having 'no time, no time' as Renee's friend put it).

No experiments. Not even the teacher attempting one to the scornful delight of their class when it goes embarrasingly wrong. Nope, the work is just read and (hopefully) remembered, to be dutifully regurgitated on a later day.

I could and still can, see Jo's point. There's something just nice and sort of quaint about kids finishing school and going to play, but that rarely seems to happen here (unless spending the odd few hours in an internet cafe shooting the beejesus out of each other counts). Other than that, it's study, sleep, and repeat.

I'm not really siding with anyone here. As the Chinese girl (her name escapes me I'm afraid) put it, the system is ingrained now so to change it would require a complete restart, which certainly the current establishment doesn't look like doing (to my very limited knowledge at least).

Poor little blighters eh? I'm just reporting it as I hear it. Any thoughts? Any unlucky internet surfers just stumbled across this ramble and care to put me 'in the right'? Just click 'Comment' below and get busy responding! If it doesn't work, email me (matwade76@hotmail.com).

I WILL get my pictures of last night's festivities developed forthwith (though don't put off anything important in the wait, as one camera didn't have a flash and my photography is atrocious at the best of times). There's my self-marketing done, i'm off...

Oh, but before I go (and don't just pass this off, take note!), if you consider yourself to have any sense of humour at all (and I assume you must have it you're still reading this dribble), check out this site -->

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mil.millington/things.html

It's called 'Things my girlfriend and I have argued about' by Mil Millington (a minor genius of anecdote and description to half my mind, and an unlucky pup to the other). It will take you a few days to enjoy all the stories here, but the writing is superb and it's 'laugh out loud (then wake up still laughing out loud about it)' funny. Really. Look at it!

(You still here? I said LOOK at it!).