10 Things I HATE About China: They Don’t Speak English

Lazy bastards.

Why can’t they just learn the language?  Don’t they know that their 1.3 billion people should just accomodate ME?

I have an idea.  They should hire a bunch of native-English speakers (in addition to their normal English teachers) to teach their students all the way from middle school through college, then they would be great at it.

….. Oh, right.  That’s my job.

I’m a failure.

This gets only 2 Lil Red Commie Books.  As hard as not knowing the language can make daily life sometimes, it’s also a big part of what makes life different and exciting here.

Suffering From the Skin Disease Known As…. GINGERVITIS

Today at the end of class, we watched “Black or White” by Michael Jackson for a bit.  This turned out to be an even better teaching tool than I could have imagined.  Just way too much material to teach and work with.  Apart from the normal things I can teach when we listen to music (mood, feelings, style of music, etc.), the video itself is such a visual display that it kept giving more and more.

Different races, countries, landmarks, and even some of the old comparison lessons I have tried to drill into them came up.  All in all, I wish I had devoted an entire class to it instead of just the last 15 minutes (Originally I was only showing it because last week was Christmas and I called it their Christmas present). I can always pull a few things that make videos worthwhile, but this one was the best yet.

But then the best thing possible happened.  Towards the end of the video, when there are the different races of people (who look like they’re naked… my kids thought that was hilarious), one of the people just so happened to have red hair, fair skin, and freckles.  As we went through the different people (“She is what?”, “Japanese”, “And where is she from?”, “Japan!”), I was going to skip over that one, thinking that I didn’t have anything good for her.

And then it dawned on me: Irish.

And what are a good amount of Irish people? GINGERS! (“Ahhhh sick, gross.”)

So now I have a whole group of kids who probably think that all Irish people are gingers.  I apologize to any good Irish with souls out there who I may have offended by doing so.

But don’t worry Nolan, I didn’t teach them that you are soulless and god hates you.  That would’ve just been cruel (well, that, and the fact that most of them don’t know what a soul or even god is).

Oh, Nolan.

Another Holiday Down, Two More To Go

Well, Thanksgiving is over.  In our time over here, Kel and I have taken stretches of time by looking forward to the next landmark.  Some of them are holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, Xmas, New Year’s), birthdays, etc.  Others are just other important days that give us a good marker of our time here (Summer break, Christina arriving in Shanghai, Kel’s buddy Jeff visiting, etc.).  Well, now that gan en jie has passed, we’re down to just Xmas and New Year’s and we’re home.  I’m not going to get into all of that now, but I just thought I’d throw that out there as a way to show how we look at our time here.

Anyways, sorry this has taken so long, but I was waiting to get all of our pictures before posting this.  It turns out that I still haven’t gotten the ones from Kel’s camera, but we managed a lot with Christina’s, so here we go.

A few observations from a Thanksgiving in China:

- Christina came in from Shanghai the night before.  Her, Kel, Daniel (from London), and I end up at Kel’s place around 9pm.  We talk many times about going out to a club or bar.  After all, it IS the Night Before Thanksgiving.  10pm rolls by, we’re still in the apartment. 11pm comes and goes.  By the time midnite hits, I realize we’re not making it out tonight.  However, one of the supermarkets sells bottles of Stolichnaya for 60 yuan ($9US), and we’re well into our second bottle by then, we’re not worried.

- Drink of choice in America? Vodka water and a piece of lime.  Drink of choice in China? Cosmonauts! Vodka and Tang: So Good, It’s What the Astronauts Drank.

- Sneaking INTO my compound at 3am seems like it just doesn’t make sense.  First off, I’m 26 now, I feel like I shouldn’t be sneaking anywhere anymore.  Not to mention that I’m trying to sneak INTO an apartment that’s mine (not that I sneak into other people’s apartments… often).  Oh yeah, and I have 3 classes the next afternoon.  It’s a good thing I got plenty of Vitamin C from drinking all of that Tang tonight.

- Christina comes with me to my classes.  My students are one part mesmerized, one part scared, and one part in love.  Having her there is great for me, I can spend time talking about her, and explaining Thanksgiving.  Throw in some pics of us from back in high school and my day’s a breeze.  I was a little surprised that more of the students didn’t ask her questions, but not too much (I mean, speak English in your Oral English Class? Absurd!).  One student who came in a minute late didn’t see her with me at the front of the class at first, and when he caught sight of her, he almost jumped out of his shoes.  Another one (who happens to be one of the 4 students I have ever kicked out of class) was so timid around her when she sat at the desk next to him, that he moved away like she had the cooties.  The boys were absolutely transfixed on her.

- The Chinese people have a strange relationship with personal space.  Their comfort level is much smaller than ours.  However, actual physical contact is much more limited.  So when I showed pics of Christina and I close to each other, there was no convincing the kids that we weren’t dating (nevermind the fact that one of the first things any of them asked when they saw her was if she was my wife).  Of course, every single picture they have ever seen of a girl, they always assume that it’s my girlfriend, so that’s just them being young, I suppose.

-The day before Thanksgiving, I came up with the menu, shopping list, and plan of cooking, and did the shopping.  Around 2AM the night before, Kel started to try to make up a plan.  When I informed him that it was all done and that all he had to do was buy a chicken for me to cook, him and Daniel decided that it would be a good idea to continue our chicken slaughtering holiday tradition (oh the things you will try to accomplish with the help of vodka).  They had nothing to do the next day until I would be arriving at 4:30, plenty of time.  It didn’t happen.  But that was okay with me anyways, because I would have been teaching while all of the fun butchering would’ve been happening.  So if they weren’t killing a chicken, they just had to buy a dead one by 4:30 so I could cook it (along with all the other food).  This, too, did not happen.

Alright, well, this is getting kind of long, and I have a lot of pictures to put up, so I’m just going to split this into a two-parter (plus, I have the new episode of Dexter to watch tonight, haha).  I should have Part 2 of this gripping drama up for you all tomorrow.

Finally some shots of me in action! Now that I have the beard, all I need is a suede jacket with tweed patches (/simpson’d)

Don’t know if you can really see the pic on the overhead or not, but I used this one to teach “bar”, “beer”, and “going out with my friends”. You know, the important stuff.

I, the teacher, am at the front of the class. Christina is taking this picture from the back. Obviously the center of attention.

A few actually were brave enough to take a picture or two.

Some of the students will actually be outgoing on occasion.

Soon after this pic was snapped, the entire human pyramid collapsed. I think it was just an excuse for some of the boys to try to cop a feel on Xtina.

One of the pictures I showed in class. (Ahhh, Mort’s. I can almost taste a burger already). If they weren’t asking if we were married, I was explaining that, yes, I was very fat, thank you.

“How to Not Get Things Accomplished” by A Chinese School System

My status at the school here seems to flow somewhere between “you’re a great teacher and what you do here is important” and “who are you? why are you here? your classes are worthless”.  Today it has definitely felt like I’m in the latter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really complaining too much, just, well, yeah I guess I am complaining.

A little background information first.  I have lived at my new school for about two months now.  It took almost a week before I was able to get the password and username for the internet and get fully online.  And it worked for about a month.  Then, almost two weeks ago on a Friday, it went out.  That means that roughly 65% of the time I’ve lived here, they have been unable to make the internet work correctly (even though it never goes out in the school buildings themselves). So I had to wait till Monday to contact the English speaker at that school.  She got the computer teacher to come to my apartment that afternoon, so I thought everything was going great.

But then he came, looked at my computer and router, and left.  This teacher doesn’t speak a word of English, so I had no idea what was going on.  Wednesday I talked to my contact again, where she informs me that the teacher couldn’t understand my computer because of the English and that he would come back with his computer.  I told her I had until 1pm off every day except Tuesdays (this would come up again) when he was able to come back.  She said he would come either Thursday or Friday.

Thursday, nothing.

Friday, nothing.

Weekend, nothing.

Monday morning I wake up early and call her again, and she tells me she forgot to call me back, but that he was supposed to come that morning.  She says she will call him and find out when; I take the time to explain that if there is a problem, I am there any morning except Tuesdays.  She calls me back 10 minutes later to say that he is busy, and that he will come Tuesday morning.  After I once again explain that problem, we finally get it worked out that he will come Wednesday at 9am.

A few other scheduling snafus arose, but luckily he did in fact stop by this morning, and had the same problem with his computer that I had been having with mine.  Again, he does not speak English, but with my limited Chinese, I managed to make out that he would have to come back.  I explained that I had classes this afternoon, but I would be home till 12:30.

And he never came back.

Now I’m working on 12 days with no internet at home, and I am taking off for the next two days (midterms are here, which means Professor Talbert has no class), so that means the earliest I will be able to have that fixed is Monday (if he actually comes).

When I got to the office this afternoon and explained the situation to my contact here (not the one who has been my contact with the computer teacher, different schools) and she volunteers that I can have my classes covered this afternoon if he will be returning.  This sounds great, except I tried to call my contact at the other school back to find out the deal with the computer teacher, and once again she didn’t answer (she’s the one who I called six times in two hours and I never once got a call back. I mean, c’mon! If you miss that many calls from one person, even if you don’t have your phone that night, don’t you call them back when you do see it? Especially when you are in some sort of helper role?  Not her, not once.).  This goes back to my importance here.  What she (the helpful contact) was saying was that in three minutes they would have my classes covered to take care of this problem, BUT WE CAN’T JUST MANAGE TO FIX IT IN THE FIRST TWO WEEKS?  I mean, if it’s that easy, I’ll just go on strike because I don’t know when I can leave my apartment in case the computer teacher is coming over.  My classes are so important that we can just cancel them within three minutes of the beginning bell.  I feel needed.

So now I’m going ahead and teaching today.  It’s slightly less unbearable in the classrooms today, though my fingers still haven’t completely regained feeling.

Ohhhhh, China.

 

It’s So Cold in the C

I know I mentioned this in the last post, but it’s so cold here right now.

And I know I mentioned this as well, but none of the buildings (or maybe very, very few) have heating other than an occasional window AC/heat unit.

And the classrooms at my school don’t even have that.  In fact, the classrooms amount to little more than drafty barricades from the wind, no insulation or anything.  The buildings are setup like a motel, so that the hallways are all outside.  This means that in-between classes I get to freeze, and because there is only the one barrier from the outside (plus an entire wall is old windows with no weather-proofing so those aren’t keeping the hot air in either), I get to freeze IN my classes as well.  I just spent my last 3 classes staring at my breath as I talked to my students.  Let me restate that sentence:

I CAN SEE MY BREATH IN CLASS.

I remember growing up and every once in a while the water heater would not work at school on particularly cold days, and so we’d get the day off from school.  That doesn’t happen here.  The students bundle up in 1-2 coats, a sweater or two, and just freeze all day.  And of course, that means that the teachers get to freeze as well.  Going through my classes today, I don’t know how many times I dropped the chalk because my fingers just didn’t have enough feeling in them.

I’m about five degrees away from calling in sick for a week.

And We’re Off Again

Ok, so after a quick-moving 9 days back in Jiaxing, Kel and I are taking off on the 2nd half of the trip tomorrow afternoon.  We are basically heading up the eastern coastal area to Beijing, with a few cities along the way.  After Beijing, we finally see the Great Wall, and head west towards Xi’an and Terra Cotta Warriors.  Next it’ll hopefully be to see the Shaolin Temple (have to see the fighting monks), and then a little further west to Chengdu.  That’s the last planned stop before the longest train ride of this half (though it won’t be anywhere near as long as the 40 hour ride from last time….. we hope), but if we have time, maybe we’ll stop at a town or two on the way back to break it up.

This is the part of the trip we get to see some of the more famous tourist spots in the country.  Beijing alone has Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and is near the Great Wall, plus a ton of other sights we don’t want to miss.  Tai Shan is a mountain we’ll hopefully be summitting within the first 3 days of the trip (ok, ok, by “summitting” I mean walking up 6000 steps while being surrounded by Chinese tourists).  It’s considered a very holy, and lucky, mountain.  If you make it to the top, you’re supposed to live to 100 years old.  So that would be nice.  And the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xi’an are supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime sight.  Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about this trip.  It’ll be nice to not have to have a full day of travel for every 2 days we’d be in any given city.  Sure, we’ll still have a fair amount of 4-8 hour trips, but most of our destinations won’t come anywhere close to the 20+ hour trips.

The big downside of this trip will be the heat.  I gotta admit, the weather in Jiaxing has been great the last 3 days, like almost a nice fall day.  I know that’ll change any day now, but I feel kind of sad leaving it behind for the certain heat of the coming cities.  Ji’nan, hot.  Qingdao, hot (though on the ocean, so our fingers are crossed).  Beijing, hot. Pingyao, hot.  Xi’an, hot.  Chengdu, moderately hot (it’s a little up in the mountains so we’re hoping again).

So there you go.  That’s a rough look at the plan for the next 3-4 weeks.  I’ve been having a text conversation with my english contact at my school, trying to figure out when the first day that I am needed back is.  And after trading about 6 texts back and forth, I’m pretty sure my 1st day of classes is September 1.

But I might need to be back on the 25th for something.

But that might be for Chinese teachers only.

But maybe I should stay near my dormitory after that day for more information, just in case.

So here we go again.  We’ll probably plan on getting back around the 23rd or so, at least I would imagine.  Who knows, maybe we’ll get calls telling us we don’t need to be back till later.  Not holding my breath on that one though.

Close to Summer

Well, here we are, it’s June 11th, it’s 90 degrees outside with humidity constantly hovering around 180% (did you know that 82% of all statistics are made up on the spot? It’s science, look it up.), and I’m still riding my bike to school everyday. Throw in the fact that none of the classrooms have air conditioning, and it’s getting pretty uncomfortable to teach class. Just another day in Jiaxing I guess.

But there is good news. No, wait, there is GREAT news. I just found out this morning that all of my Thursday classes are done for the rest of the year. These are all of my classes at the high school that I live at, 5 classes in total. This is fantastic news for a few reasons.

First, obviously it always feels good to have a day off.
Second, since this was my only day of high schoolers, I now don’t have to create an additional lesson plan each week. This saves me about another hour or so each week.
And finally, and most importantly, this signals that the summer break is finally coming. I could not be more excited. It’s finally almost time to go travel and have a little fun. Having school in the middle of June is just plain wrong. I don’t care how many studies state that it is so much better for students to not have a long summer holiday, I will never get used to having class this late in the summer. This is the time for fun, especially for kids. This is the time to play a little baseball, maybe a round of golf, fire up the grill and have a couple beers. Well, since I can’t do any of those things in China besides the beer, I guess I’ll just settle for looking forward to the trip. Either way, with the news about my classes, it’s a good day.

Let’s Get Creative

My philosophy to teaching (if you can call “I have no idea what I am doing, I’ll just wing it” a philosophy) has changed a little bit over the past 2 and a 1/2 months. Whereas I used to try to teach new ideas, and the words that go along with them, I now just try to teach maybe 3-4 new words per class. And even that’s tough.

Case in point: Last week and the beginning of this week was story time/creative writing in my class. What that meant was that I started a story on the board. Then I would call on students (because no one actually raises their hand and volunteers. Seriously. I mean, where the hell are the showoffs? The kids who would just knock down every question possible. I know when I was young I liked to do that in class. I eventually grew out of it right around my students’ age, but still, in every class there’s bound to be one kid who’s just a little too arrogant and likes to hear himself talk too much, right? Not here. Darn collectivist culture is to blame I tell ya.) and give them prompts to what should come next. I wasn’t even looking for whole sentences, just ideas. And this was like pulling teeth at first. To give an idea of what we were working on, here is half of what I had on the board:
“I have a 10 meter tall gorilla named Mr. Fish. He is a giant! Mr. Fish lives in a huge tree outside our school. He eats crazy foods, like hamburgers, ice cream, TVs, bananas, and …” … The students then had to give me 2 or 3 things that he likes to eat. And what is the first thing they came up with in most classes? WATER. I have a giant gorilla eating TVs and hamburgers, and they can’t get past the logic that he should drink some water (probably hot water too, not just luke-warm here either, they like it hot).

So, needless to say, this lesson was sinking like a rock. And then I just completely gave up on my expectations. Instead of hoping they would actually be able to form a whole sentence, or at least have a little fun making a silly story, I decided to teach a couple of adjectives. Now, I’m not saying teach what an adjective is, or even when you use one, just teach a few words to use, so they can at least recognize them. So whenever they would work up a new idea, I’d throw a new word on the board, focusing mostly on describing size.

So in a week of teaching about 1000 students last week, I taught the words “huge”, “giant”, “extremely”, and “cops”. That’s all. I wonder if 50 of the 1000 still would be able to use any of those words a week later. So if 5% retain 4 words that I taught them, is that a good success rate? Here? I take it as a win.

I May Have Just Invented a Chinese Holiday

It was Communist Propaganda Day yesterday here in Jiaxing. What does that mean for me exactly? Well, not much really. My last class, which was also the last period of the day, was moved up to my free period right before then. So I got out an hour earlier than usual, which was nice. I don’t really know what Communist Propaganda Day entails, other then the students lining up outside on the track area in rows according to class and listening to a few teachers and administrators talk about something. The first kid in each row waved a flag every couple of minutes too. I think maybe a few kids got awards for something (probably turning in their capitalist neighbors), as some of them went up to the stage for a minute, but other than that I don’t know. I didn’t stay for the whole thing, so maybe there was a big party I missed out on.

The only reason I call it Communist Propaganda Day is because that’s about all of the information I managed to get from one of my student’s broken English when he tried to explain it to me. I managed to get 4 main ideas from him:
1) The students all have neckerchiefs that they wear on occasion. Today? They all had them on.
2) The student told me because they are like the national flag.
3) He then proceeded to draw a picture on his notebook. Of what? A sickle. And then he started to talk about “old flag”.
4) Then he started saying “Soviet Union” a few times, and how they used to be good friends.

And that is how I managed to invent Communist Propaganda Day.

Picture Day

Yesterday was picture day at my school. So how does a Chinese middle school photograph approximately 1000 students in about 28 different classes? They get a photographer with a PA system, that’s how.

When I arrived at school in the afternoon yesterday, I could hear commands coming over a loudspeaker, but this wasn’t the system that is hooked into the classrooms. No, there were rafters set up outside in the track/athletics area. Students were led by class onto the rafters, and the photographer (decked out in a camo army jacket and an oversized chinese straw hat) barked commands at them. I thought this was pretty humorous, especially since it was about 90 degrees yesterday with the normal feel-it-in-the-air humidity. I mean, these probably weren’t the smiling, perfectly composed pictures we were used to taking when we were kids. I kind of doubt that the students wanted to be standing outside at all at that point, even more so when you figure that this was cutting into their lunch time.

While I got a good laugh at the kids outside while I sat in my somewhat air conditioned office, I got some horrible news: There would be a teachers’ picture in 10 minutes. This is great. I’m still hot from biking to school, and now I get to stand in close proximity to 100 others who don’t seem to notice the heat at all. When we get outside, they start to line us up according to height. For the first time since I was maybe 10 years old, I am one of the tallest people there, only maybe 4 or 5 are taller than me. They line us up on the rafters, and then proceed for no less than 10 minutes to re-arrange us in some way or another.

And if I ever wondered why my students can never pay attention for more than 5 minutes at a time, I don’t anymore. These teachers, ranging in age from 25-55 could not manage to stop talking, moving around, or nagging the photographer so that he could just take the picture.

After the sun beat down on me for 5 minutes and I was standing half sideways on a riser squished in between every other teacher in the school, I was ready to get out of there. Of course, it took another 5 minutes while stragglers moseyed on up, but we finally got it done.

So, to recap, just as I was cooling down from the ever-present heat of a Chinese day in June, they pack us together in the sun for a picture. Now, I don’t take the best pictures in the first place and usually don’t even bother more than a glance when one of my friends snaps one of me, but I am actually interested to see this one. I just want to see how much sweat is dripping down my face.

And the best part of all this? Right when we finished, I got to begin my next class, which for some reason had decided to keep their windows closed for the last period and lunchtime. I have been in a lot of football locker rooms and dirty bars after closing, but the stench that hit me as I walked into there was unbelievable. Never before in my life. Wow.