Thanks, in anticipation

Today, I have just been reminded, is Teacher's Day here in China.   It's always seemed a bit daft to me to have it at the very beginning of the academic year, usually after just a few days of classes (at universities and private colleges, in fact, it is usually before the start of classes - so a Chinese colleague will give you presents "on behalf of the students").   When I've quizzed students as to how they conceive the rationale for showering their teachers with gifts and thank-you cards at the beginning of the school year, they've usually said something like, "Well, it's to make sure that they like us - and give us good marks."   'Bribery', as we call it in the West.   Not very effective bribery, of course.  Well, one does hear stories now and then of super-rich parents trying to influence teachers with fancy dinners, jewellery, TV sets - but I've never been confronted with such a moral challenge myself.  No, the gifts most of us get are just stupendously tacky.  In my first year here, one of my friends received a small plastic figurine of a footballer which - by pure coincidence - looked uncannily like the former Liverpool winger Steve McManaman.  That was one of the better ones I've ever come across.  I got a tea cup that year, which at least had utility going for it.  On subsequent occasions I always seemed to get a pen that didn't work (ah, China) or a hideously ugly set of miniature Beijing opera masks.     I have nothing that could be called "teaching" in my schedule at the moment; and, in fact, I haven't set foot in a school or university classroom for at least 2 or 3 years now (well, the last time, I was running a teacher training course rather than teaching kids, and that's two years ago now).  I am mightily relieved about that.  Teacher's Day comes as a fortuitous reminder of how happy I am to have wriggled free of that (in China) most depressing of professions.