Today, after nearly 2 months on the job, I finally had to take my required “aptitude” test and physical examination. It seemed to me that they sure waiting a long time to do this, I thought it should’ve been done, oh… I don’t know, the first week I was here! Oh well.
I met the Foreign Teacher coordinator, Shen Pingde, at 8:30 AM for a ride to the hospital where I’d take my physical. After driving for about an hour, we finally arrived at the hospital. Fortunately, the hospital wasn’t very busy, I was able to start my physical almost immediately. Being in a Chinese hospital is interesting, it’s not much different than an American hospital except for maybe a little less “sterile” feeling. The signs in Chinese and “Chinglish” (Chinese directly translated to English) we’re probably the most entertaining part. A blood sample, an ECG, a chest X-ray, measuring height and weight, and blood pressure test and I was done. In and out in under an hour.
The aptitude test, is actually an official government test, and must be taken through an official government website. I have to register and the test results are available to any school in China. This wouldn’t be so bad if the test was actually legitimate, but in reality it was actually pretty ridiculous. A multiple choice opinion test, a knowledge test, and a short essay. Granted I think it was to prove that you can actually read, write and think in English, it was a bit difficult because the test was obviously written for native speakers, by a non-native speaker. The questions and answers were riddled with Chinglish, not to mention vague and unnecessary. How the hell do I know who the author of some random book about teaching is? What’s that book about? No clue. What’s 81+819+62+(7*7)-150 equal to? Like I’m gonna work that out, I’m sure the Google calculator will though. Then, there’s the essay, “Do you think that the World Cup can help to promote world peace?” Uh, sure? I know most countries care about soccer (except for the USA, of course) in fact they typically care, A LOT. So perhaps the World Cup will keep people from shooting at each other for a couple weeks while they’re glued to the TV, if that is technically world peace, then yes, the World Cup promotes world peace.
I don’t like the fact that this kind of test result will preclude me to any school in China I wish to go to. Judging by what Shen Pingde said about it, which was pretty much that I had to do it because the government says so, and not that my school cares. I don’t think I’ll have to worry about it really. The test can be retaken every 6 months, but if it’s the same as the first test (with different questions) I’m sure it’ll be just as ridiculous as the first time around.
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haha…i LOVE the “Picks the blood” room. That’s a hilarious bad translation. I think I will now refer to PRACS as the “Picks the blood” room.
That test does seem ridiculous….I hope you wrote exactly what you said in response to the World Cup question because that would be awesome.
Then you would LOVE the “keeps the urine” sign above the area to place your full urine cups.