Shanghai

Another Saturday morning.

A malign atmosphere pervades the teachers' room, largely due to the sudden necessity of writing student reports on top of giving tests, preparing lessons and teaching the kind of teenage kids who like to draw pictures of themselves shooting their teachers to death on the whiteboard. Some of the newer teachers have reached the end of their tethers - hardly surprising given the lack of support they've been getting recently. Shanghai couldn't have come at a better time.

I felt really tired last night so I left early and took the long route home up the few hundred steps to the Martyrs' Monument to see the setting sun, then right along the top of the ridge, where I stopped at a restored pavilion and watched the neon come on one by one as the day began to die.