Not long ago, I received a message from a colleague at Iowa State who has extensive overseas teaching experience and who is working on developing a TESOL certification distance course. He wrote to ask if I could put him in touch with teachers in training here to find out what they need. His query triggered in me a response that I think is worth sharing here, as it provides my insights into the Chinese educational system. Here are edited clips from our correspondence:
Hi Sarah,
… the main reason I'm writing is to see if you or one of your colleagues might be interested in collaborating in a teacher development project of sorts. … to put the MA TESOL course online as a TESOL Certificate program, and … to convert the 588 practicum into a distance course.
I've been told one major anticipated market for this course will be English teachers in China, and so I wanted to try to line up some folks who could help with learner analysis and prototyping of some of the materials and IT tools we'll be using.
Jim
Sarah Replies:
Hi Jim,
I am very interested in teacher development and I know of a couple Chinese teachers of English here who would probably be interested in collaborating. The problem I see you facing is that of aligning objectives. Learner goals here are not language acquisition; they are passing exams. Teacher goals here are not communicative language use development: they are high student test scores. Salaries and jobs are based on student test scores. No one here sees the connection between a classroom speaking activity and improving test scores. The teachers here think it would be *nice* to use some of the stuff they learned at the seminar at ISU, but their dept. chair scolds them for digressing from the goal, and their students complain that speaking English to each other is not real practice, and their colleagues get a page or two ahead of them in the book, god forbid! The classrooms are stark boxes filled with 70-90 students and one chalkboard. And this is a mid- to high- level university.
So who do you want to certify and what do you want them to know? Technique and delivery methods? We're talking major paradigm shift. Latest research? The library here subscribes to zero professional or academic journals. It has no online catalog, but that's okay, because it doesn't have any books anyway. It is a HUGE new building. Perhaps you want them to know how TESL it is done elsewhere, which is what the group this summer learned. They think it must be fun to live in a world where you get to teach that *extra* stuff, and they enjoyed the voyeurism of learning about how we do it. If your certification is in transcendence and teaches them how to overcome the exigencies of their world with the methods of your world, we might be getting somewhere.
Pardon my cynicism, but I am just cutting to the heart of the matter as I see it. Of course everyone here benefits from having the seed of the ideas planted and, perhaps over time, they could begin finding ways to implement some aspects. And the more teachers that learn this pedagogy and method, the more likely it will change. I just want to underscore that the distance from here to there is a long journey where you may be certifying teachers who go right back to textbook-recitation-skill-and-drill as soon as they walk into the classroom. I feel that alignment of their goals with the goals of your program would need to address these conditions openly. That would be so great; I want to be a part of that discussion! Informally, on-on-one, I already have.
And you envision an online distance environment. Given the fact that I am trying to deliver my English 150 courses here using the moodle based there, it has been an interesting experiment in the frustrations of internet censorship. We should talk more, but be warned that the access, speed, and availability is not as ubiquitous as you would imagine. For example, did you know that Xinjiang province has had no internet and no text messaging since May? Of course you didn't know that, neither do 99.999% of Chinese people. Half of the resources I have embedded on my moodle won't load - they are blocked. I created a webquest website on sites.google.com that my students used for one day, but then national holiday approached and censorship got ridiculously tighter and now ALL google sites are blocked along with numerous other user-built sites like typepad or geocities, etc. Too dangerous! My students were flabbergasted that they actually had been looking at something that is now blocked. They could not believe their government would do this; they are certain it is just something wrong with the computer. So your format would have the Great Firewall of China to contend with. Do not build anything on a third-party hosted site if you want anyone on China to see it.
As far as learner needs and profiles, I could do a lot of research for you there, but it comes back to learner goals and program goals. Their current needs are: get through the textbook and get the students to pass the next exam. It is not for lack of effort that these kids study English for 8-10 years and can't understand but one in twenty words spoken in class and struggle to communicate. They have large, unusable vocabularies and crap for syntax. It is for lack of authentic communication goals that they have such poor communicative language ability. I know many teachers here want to serve their students differently and they want to learn how, but they also need to see how they could implement new methods in their current system. Can you teach that?
My best to you and the whole TESL/ALT crew,
Sarah
Jim Replies:
Sarah,
Thanks for your quick response. What an awesome rant! Reads a lot like something I'd have written in my first year in Korea (except for all the censorship stuff, of course, which sounds very challenging).
Don't worry, I have no illusions about changing hearts or minds. I know from my time in Asia how intractable old habits are over there. My ambitions with this piloting were much more modest -- mostly to try out the feasibility of some of the tools, technologies and tasks we've been kicking around…
Jim
Sarah Replies:
Hi Jim,
I've spoken with a few teachers and, like with almost everything here, there are varying answers depending on who you ask. I have some beta to pass on, and I have more connections I can put you in touch with once I know more specifically what to tell them you want from them. The dean of the English department here is very interested in collaborating, so I'd like to put you in contact with her, but I need to know more about how to explain to her what you wish to have transpire between you. Relationships here are built on tricky obligation exchanges (guanxi), and I have to work through another person to approach the introduction phase through the socially appropriate channels.
Anyway, here are some sample bits of info:
At my school, JiaoDa for short, undergraduate English majors generally become English teachers after they try to get a better job and fail (not only are there way too many college graduates for the job market, but also most language majors are women, and most women have a hard time getting a decent job in China). English Grad students (masters) are provided one course on teaching practices as part of their curriculum. You can imagine, it is an unimpressive course. As far as I can surmise, masters students do what amounts to no real research work (academic rigor is not practiced anywhere, really, and that is mostly a function of the isolation from outside information). As long as they pass the TEM8 they are certified.
My friends who are Chinese teachers of English can't think of any tangible value for having a TESOL certificate (like better opportunities or better pay). The people I spoke with do not know of any case where it is needed for them to get a job. Here is where I am confused by you saying there is a market for it here. There is a NEED for better training in the sense that teaching methods here are mostly fruitless.
There are only ten accredited 'top' universities in China. The hierarchy is such that, if you fail to get in to a 'good' university, you try for the next level or you buy your way into the next level at a 'private' university. LJU is a second tier college, but in a poor, Western province, which puts it way down low on the second tier list nationally. The third and fourth tier are the 'normal' universities and the teacher's colleges. People don't necessarily want to go there, they end up there. Nearby here is the teacher's college (ShiDa, for short). It is nominally the teacher's college anyway. Again, it appears that becoming an 'expert' in your field qualifies you as a teacher. For example, Chris has a Chinese roomate who is a senior of art at ShiDa. He just started a new job teaching art at an elementary school. He had ZERO exposure to any idea of planning a lesson or considering a possible learning goal. Not one scrap was taught for four years at the teacher's college. He just studied art and was stuck in a classroom with 65 kindergartners and one set of paints. He had never even been in a room filled with children of any age before his first day of work. So practicum? I don't really know how that fits this model. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Lastly, I am attaching an article that researched a pilot teacher training distance ed course in a rural province here (undergrad). It has a needs analysis section that seems to match what you would find here. You may be familiar with it, but, if not, I think you'll find it very applicable.
Let me know what you want me to ask people and what you want me to tell them as far as communicating back to you or finding out specific info for you.
Cheers,
Sarah
Thursday, November 12, 2009
“Betterment” 7Nov2009
In spite of vestigial sayings and doctrine about the evils of capitalism, accumulating wealth is not a shameful aim in China. People are striving for “betterment” in everyway they can, not only idealizing the opportunities that will come with education (driving their child nearly mad with constant rote studying), but also idealizing the nebulous position of “businessman.” You’ve probably heard that Chinese people are remarkable at saving money and I will tell you they are scrupulously thrifty. But more than that, they apply the same approach to business as to education: the ends are far more important than the means. Cutting corners is not only acceptable, but advised if you want to get anywhere. I have railed about achievement in school here being anathematic to thinking – process impedes progress, critical thinking creates diverse, ergo wrong, answers, problem solving leads to perversity.
Well, while being smart is not thinking, business is not entrepreneurialism. Our sense about needing to start with a good idea – a niche of market need, customer base, delivery system, and some sense of customer service – is bootless. If selling means getting someone to pay you for something, nothing else matters. This translates into the fact that 90% of the crap that is put into jars or bottles, wrapped up in packaging, shipped out to stores, street carts, markets and shops is totally bogus! You can buy a bag of ‘sugar’ that looks like crystal granules, but smells like yeast and tastes like vinegar. A jar of apricot jam that smells like meat and tastes like maltomeal. How about a towel that has terry cloth on the visible side and nothing on the hidden side (besides the ink bleeding through that says “happy snoppy” and has a really poor rendition of Snoopy the dog).Try our mop that doesn’t hold water, it goes with the three brooms with falling-off handles that I have purchased since living here. And all these clothes made by “Tomy Hifingr” and “Cavin Kine” look great with a new pair of weird shaped “Adaiddas.” I’m still flummoxed by a jacket that probably was trying to be Abercrombie & Fitch but was so far from it I’ll never know. There are 100’s of millions of computers on this country not a one of which is running on a legitimate piece of software, including none at the fine university where I work. Plumbing looks like pipes, but doesn’t hold water. Electrical fixtures look like appliances, but short out, fizzle, or just burst into flames. (Most of the outlets I have seen bear the black residue of previous combustions). Restaurants serve you with always wet but rarely clean utensils that have any number of chips, cracks, and dents in them. I bought an alarm clock that only works lying down on its side so that I can’t see the time. But all these people selling crap everywhere constantly are successful because they made the sale and there is nothing else.
These are annoying examples of cutting-corners, but there are far more insidious manifestations of this in the big-business world. Appearance is fact, and fact is what you say it is. Building equals development. Factories equal industry. Industry and development equal progress. Progress equals “betterment” for China. In construction, never mind that the building design itself is catastrophically inefficient, ugly, poorly conceived, and aesthetically and functionally inappropriate for the sites, the execution of the construction is so cheap, shoddy, ramshackle, and utterly craftless that no one could have confidence in the quality or integrity of the structures. But they look like buildings or bridges or roads or hospital or schools, and China is getting better at the tune of 100’s of these concrete monstrosities per second. In industry, pay no attention to the severe liberties taken, like no cooling towers or settling ponds because that’s what rivers are for and it would impede progress to have those things and there are no ill effects, the rivers are fine. Smokestack gasses and particulates? We are very modern and have all the modern technology. We win awards for environmentalism from the government. My eyes are burning, my throat and lungs are raked raw and it looks like a brown sunset all day long, but we are a modern nation.
So what about those sayings I mentioned that reflect the previous decades of mistrust of capital wealth? Here’s a gem: When a man gets rich, he has done something bad; when a woman does bad, she gets rich.
Well, while being smart is not thinking, business is not entrepreneurialism. Our sense about needing to start with a good idea – a niche of market need, customer base, delivery system, and some sense of customer service – is bootless. If selling means getting someone to pay you for something, nothing else matters. This translates into the fact that 90% of the crap that is put into jars or bottles, wrapped up in packaging, shipped out to stores, street carts, markets and shops is totally bogus! You can buy a bag of ‘sugar’ that looks like crystal granules, but smells like yeast and tastes like vinegar. A jar of apricot jam that smells like meat and tastes like maltomeal. How about a towel that has terry cloth on the visible side and nothing on the hidden side (besides the ink bleeding through that says “happy snoppy” and has a really poor rendition of Snoopy the dog).Try our mop that doesn’t hold water, it goes with the three brooms with falling-off handles that I have purchased since living here. And all these clothes made by “Tomy Hifingr” and “Cavin Kine” look great with a new pair of weird shaped “Adaiddas.” I’m still flummoxed by a jacket that probably was trying to be Abercrombie & Fitch but was so far from it I’ll never know. There are 100’s of millions of computers on this country not a one of which is running on a legitimate piece of software, including none at the fine university where I work. Plumbing looks like pipes, but doesn’t hold water. Electrical fixtures look like appliances, but short out, fizzle, or just burst into flames. (Most of the outlets I have seen bear the black residue of previous combustions). Restaurants serve you with always wet but rarely clean utensils that have any number of chips, cracks, and dents in them. I bought an alarm clock that only works lying down on its side so that I can’t see the time. But all these people selling crap everywhere constantly are successful because they made the sale and there is nothing else.
These are annoying examples of cutting-corners, but there are far more insidious manifestations of this in the big-business world. Appearance is fact, and fact is what you say it is. Building equals development. Factories equal industry. Industry and development equal progress. Progress equals “betterment” for China. In construction, never mind that the building design itself is catastrophically inefficient, ugly, poorly conceived, and aesthetically and functionally inappropriate for the sites, the execution of the construction is so cheap, shoddy, ramshackle, and utterly craftless that no one could have confidence in the quality or integrity of the structures. But they look like buildings or bridges or roads or hospital or schools, and China is getting better at the tune of 100’s of these concrete monstrosities per second. In industry, pay no attention to the severe liberties taken, like no cooling towers or settling ponds because that’s what rivers are for and it would impede progress to have those things and there are no ill effects, the rivers are fine. Smokestack gasses and particulates? We are very modern and have all the modern technology. We win awards for environmentalism from the government. My eyes are burning, my throat and lungs are raked raw and it looks like a brown sunset all day long, but we are a modern nation.
So what about those sayings I mentioned that reflect the previous decades of mistrust of capital wealth? Here’s a gem: When a man gets rich, he has done something bad; when a woman does bad, she gets rich.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Loudspeakers are really LOUD
Too many things here boggle the unfamiliar mind; it is dangerous to visit the question "why?" I could spend a lot of time there, and next find myself in the land of "if only." You see, as degenerate as we think Americans have become at solving problems, at least we still have some compulsion to take initiative and once in a while try. Here it seems that resignation is a necessary survival tool. I ask my Chinese friends how they can tolerate certain conditions (like the very very very sub-standard infrastructure in Gansu province) and they just pity me and tell me I'll get used to it. BUT HOW AM I TO GET USED TO THE CONSTANT ASSAULT ON MY EARS OF THE OMNIPRESENT LOUDSPEAKERS!!! Am I really going to be able to tune it out and continue my discussions, my transactions, and my classroom lectures and activities? This stuff is BLASTING several hours a day a mixture of talk radio and pop music, including, inevitably, the Carpenters "every sha-la-la-la, every wo-wo-wo-wo," which is taken here as second only to the National Anthem as an American favorite.
Here is the letter I really wish I would send to the administration:
Dear Mr. President of Lanzhou Jiaotong University,
It is an honor and pleasure to serve on your faculty as an English instructor. I enjoy my work and appreciate the diligent efforts of the administration to ensure that the education offered here follows the highest standards. Our mutual concern for providing the best learning environment is why I am writing you today. I believe we are inadvertently causing adverse learning conditions by training our students to ignore audio messages.
How are we doing this? Each morning at 6:30, each afternoon, and each evening our campus broadcasts very loudly a radio program. While the intention of the broadcast may be to enhance and support our community with information and culture, it has an unfortunate effect. Because most everyone has other things and people to attend to at these times, they must simultaneously ignore the audio broadcast while they continue with their daily routines. This sets the habitual practice of ignoring, or ‘tuning out,’ spoken instructions and information. The students arrive in class each day having practiced for a few hours already the skill of NOT listening. I believe we have harmed their ability to pay attention by assaulting them with background broadcasts during times when they cannot possibly pay full attention. I’m sure you agree that we do not want them to be good at NOT listening.
I hope we can resolve this inadvertent negative result by making sure that whenever we are delivering an important message we do it at a time and place when it is appropriate to expect our audience to be at full attention. The loudspeaker broadcasts should be used only rarely for extremely important announcements. Our community would then respect the broadcast and give it proper attention instead of habitually ignoring it. In this way, I think we can teach our students much improved listening and attention habits that will serve all of us better. It would seem that building a new standard for paying attention would be yet another way our great university could advance the quality of education we deliver.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
Sarah S. Davis
Lecturer of English,
Iowa State University and Lanzhou Jiaotong University
Here is the letter I really wish I would send to the administration:
Dear Mr. President of Lanzhou Jiaotong University,
It is an honor and pleasure to serve on your faculty as an English instructor. I enjoy my work and appreciate the diligent efforts of the administration to ensure that the education offered here follows the highest standards. Our mutual concern for providing the best learning environment is why I am writing you today. I believe we are inadvertently causing adverse learning conditions by training our students to ignore audio messages.
How are we doing this? Each morning at 6:30, each afternoon, and each evening our campus broadcasts very loudly a radio program. While the intention of the broadcast may be to enhance and support our community with information and culture, it has an unfortunate effect. Because most everyone has other things and people to attend to at these times, they must simultaneously ignore the audio broadcast while they continue with their daily routines. This sets the habitual practice of ignoring, or ‘tuning out,’ spoken instructions and information. The students arrive in class each day having practiced for a few hours already the skill of NOT listening. I believe we have harmed their ability to pay attention by assaulting them with background broadcasts during times when they cannot possibly pay full attention. I’m sure you agree that we do not want them to be good at NOT listening.
I hope we can resolve this inadvertent negative result by making sure that whenever we are delivering an important message we do it at a time and place when it is appropriate to expect our audience to be at full attention. The loudspeaker broadcasts should be used only rarely for extremely important announcements. Our community would then respect the broadcast and give it proper attention instead of habitually ignoring it. In this way, I think we can teach our students much improved listening and attention habits that will serve all of us better. It would seem that building a new standard for paying attention would be yet another way our great university could advance the quality of education we deliver.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
Sarah S. Davis
Lecturer of English,
Iowa State University and Lanzhou Jiaotong University
Saturday, September 12, 2009
More on traffic
There is no ‘rush’ hour so much as there is peak occupancy times that are more like ‘push’ hours, when the spaces between bodies evaporates. Again, think physics and the basic law of displacement. But the fact that everybody is all trying to get somewhere at the same time is not an inconvenience; it’s a fact of life. Personal space is an untold fable.
Chaos is the natural order in China*
Take traffic as a metaphor. Cars, bikes, motorcycles, electric bikes, scooters, pedestrians, bike trucks and three-wheelers all use the same corridors all at the same time and in all directions. Yet I have seen fewer accidents here than in the states where traffic flows are segregated, regulated, and (by virtue of suppression) aggravated. There is no predictable pattern to who passes whom on which side, nor does size or velocity win right of way or even try to claim it. People just go, and they just go in a seamless interactive dance that never stops for child, bus, nor elderly. No one makes an abrupt move, a sharp turn, a furtive move. No squirrelly indecision comes in to play because everyone is calculating their moves based on everyone else’s displacement. Stopping is the wrench in the machine. Yet in the name of progress and modernity, there are intersections here equipped with the familiar red, amber, and green lights. Never could anyone have predicted how such an arbitrary and useless convulsion of control could cause so much interruption to the basic function of Chinese life: movement.
Now extend the metaphor. If the natural order is to just go and do things as readily and simply as possible, then requiring people to stop and follow procedure is like putting a fish on a bicycle. And so you have the ultimate paradox: traffic lights cause traffic jams and governmental/institutional regulations cause insane disruptions and delays to every simple process. But this is really the crux of how difficult it is to “modernize” in the global community. “Westernize” is what it means to superimpose modern infrastructure over organic cities, and western systems require centuries of western sensibilities to function. No one is going to swim against the river and obey no smoking signs or use rubbish bins or refrain from shouting, spitting, shoving or staring just because it would help make the place more 'orderly' - what ever that means. I would guess that the sensibility of Chinese people at a four way stop, for example, would be never to stop if a) other cars are stopped, or b) there are no cars in sight, or c) there are people or scooters or bicycles, because everyone knows they can just swerve around each other so there is no need to stop. And so it follows that trying to institute 'orderly' systems is tacitly ineffectual.
But China wants to be respected as a contemporary to the other powerful nations and so the government must exert governmental control. And what else is government than an entity which issues policy? And what else is policy than regulation? And how better can we be regulated than to fill out a request in triplicate and go to four different bureaus to get each copy stamped and wait for the proper provincial departments to place their seal on it and have you go back to get it registered (with the appropriate photographs, doctor’s exam, and leave your passport for a week and that’ll be 800RMB by the way). And did I mention that you wait in one line to get a ticket so that you can wait in the other line and never does anyone take that ticket so you stuff it into your pocket with the other 5-7 tickets you get everyday for everything from a bowl of noodles to entering a temple to riding a bus (it’s not a transfer, it’s not anything, really). Yes, paperwork and tickets and stamps. These are the signs of progress, and because they are regulating against everything that would naturally fall like an apple from a tree, it takes a very, very, very long time to conduct official transactions. Or to ‘officially’ get across the street.
*An American friend and colleague here at Lanzhou Jiaotong University made the statement, "Chaos is the natural order in China" to help explain just about everything to me. It does.
Now extend the metaphor. If the natural order is to just go and do things as readily and simply as possible, then requiring people to stop and follow procedure is like putting a fish on a bicycle. And so you have the ultimate paradox: traffic lights cause traffic jams and governmental/institutional regulations cause insane disruptions and delays to every simple process. But this is really the crux of how difficult it is to “modernize” in the global community. “Westernize” is what it means to superimpose modern infrastructure over organic cities, and western systems require centuries of western sensibilities to function. No one is going to swim against the river and obey no smoking signs or use rubbish bins or refrain from shouting, spitting, shoving or staring just because it would help make the place more 'orderly' - what ever that means. I would guess that the sensibility of Chinese people at a four way stop, for example, would be never to stop if a) other cars are stopped, or b) there are no cars in sight, or c) there are people or scooters or bicycles, because everyone knows they can just swerve around each other so there is no need to stop. And so it follows that trying to institute 'orderly' systems is tacitly ineffectual.
But China wants to be respected as a contemporary to the other powerful nations and so the government must exert governmental control. And what else is government than an entity which issues policy? And what else is policy than regulation? And how better can we be regulated than to fill out a request in triplicate and go to four different bureaus to get each copy stamped and wait for the proper provincial departments to place their seal on it and have you go back to get it registered (with the appropriate photographs, doctor’s exam, and leave your passport for a week and that’ll be 800RMB by the way). And did I mention that you wait in one line to get a ticket so that you can wait in the other line and never does anyone take that ticket so you stuff it into your pocket with the other 5-7 tickets you get everyday for everything from a bowl of noodles to entering a temple to riding a bus (it’s not a transfer, it’s not anything, really). Yes, paperwork and tickets and stamps. These are the signs of progress, and because they are regulating against everything that would naturally fall like an apple from a tree, it takes a very, very, very long time to conduct official transactions. Or to ‘officially’ get across the street.
*An American friend and colleague here at Lanzhou Jiaotong University made the statement, "Chaos is the natural order in China" to help explain just about everything to me. It does.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Map of Lanzhou
Click on the title of this post and see google map I just made. A great set of pictures can be found at http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9825059 Some of the collection were taken by one of my colleagues here, Yao Bin.
Breaking Through the Silk Curtain
At last I am able to post some of my observations, not the least of which is that censorship is alive and well in China. Today's NYT had an article about the latest wave of internet control, most of which can be circumnavigated after major inconveniences. The drawback with working through proxies is A) everything slows down (on an already slow connection), and B) the proxies come and go; I've had one drop access just this week. If you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/world/asia/06chinanet.html?hp and if you find more on the topic, send me the link. I am posting three different writings from the past week, thanks for the patience and sorry these are all at once. Let me know what you think! I start teaching tomorrow!
It’s not the spitting per se
Years of playing ultimate Frisbee made me no stranger to spitting. There’s nothing like high intensity aerobic action to get the phlegm moving. So I can’t say that I find the Chinese habit of public spitting in of itself to be offensive. I’ll admit to being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of all that expectorated snot multiplied across a dense population, the product of which glimmers like a bed of shell-less oysters over the streets and sidewalks and sometimes on floors and walls. But spit alone is not enough to push me over my very high squeamishness threshold (a threshold, mind you, that once was brooched but not breeched when I witnessed the Hostages ultimate team in 1981 accepting their 3rd place trophy by hocking lougies on it and licking it clean. Gross, but I kinda liked it).
So far I can tolerate other unfamiliar grossness, like the open-trousered, bare-butted babies and the concomitant re-classification of baby pooh as a benign byproduct of childhood and, therefore, permissible to excrete any and everywhere. This practice violates my postulate that if it looks like shit and smells like shit, you can safely guess what it is, yet I have been able thus far to stomach it (if I begin to see it happening too close to where I actually have to eat or live, I’ll probably change my mind on that one, but for now, I’m keeping my cool). I’m even handling the open-stall public restroom squat toilets where the pits are so close together you‘re likely to rub knees with your neighbor and exchange a few friendly splashes on your feet.
No, it takes more than that to trigger my gag reflex, and the Chinese have the formula. It’s the work up to the act of spitting that unnerves me, like nails on a chalkboard. The gutteral sounds and gesticulations that go into working up the wad are what make me cringe. It’s often initiated by lowering the ubiquitous cigarette as the shoulders raise up and the grating sound begins: Phlegmatic hawking, percolating, bolus forming, full-body cocking, and a vocalized launching customarily followed up with snot rockets and blowing the last clinging slime into one’s hands and rubbing them any old where. That, my friends, grosses me out. Try enjoying your lunch, ignoring the captured crickets in the box by the door screeching above the fray of shouting slurping snorting hoards and the dense smell of cigarettes and rancid fry oil and coal smoke, only to be jarred back into an awareness of just how foreign this all is to you by the rasping plegmy throat calls of your neighbor hocking a slimy yellow one at the ground next to you. I haven’t let everything get to me, but that sound has a way. It has a way.
So far I can tolerate other unfamiliar grossness, like the open-trousered, bare-butted babies and the concomitant re-classification of baby pooh as a benign byproduct of childhood and, therefore, permissible to excrete any and everywhere. This practice violates my postulate that if it looks like shit and smells like shit, you can safely guess what it is, yet I have been able thus far to stomach it (if I begin to see it happening too close to where I actually have to eat or live, I’ll probably change my mind on that one, but for now, I’m keeping my cool). I’m even handling the open-stall public restroom squat toilets where the pits are so close together you‘re likely to rub knees with your neighbor and exchange a few friendly splashes on your feet.
No, it takes more than that to trigger my gag reflex, and the Chinese have the formula. It’s the work up to the act of spitting that unnerves me, like nails on a chalkboard. The gutteral sounds and gesticulations that go into working up the wad are what make me cringe. It’s often initiated by lowering the ubiquitous cigarette as the shoulders raise up and the grating sound begins: Phlegmatic hawking, percolating, bolus forming, full-body cocking, and a vocalized launching customarily followed up with snot rockets and blowing the last clinging slime into one’s hands and rubbing them any old where. That, my friends, grosses me out. Try enjoying your lunch, ignoring the captured crickets in the box by the door screeching above the fray of shouting slurping snorting hoards and the dense smell of cigarettes and rancid fry oil and coal smoke, only to be jarred back into an awareness of just how foreign this all is to you by the rasping plegmy throat calls of your neighbor hocking a slimy yellow one at the ground next to you. I haven’t let everything get to me, but that sound has a way. It has a way.
If you lived here you would be home now
I live in Lanzhou, Gansu, China. It is the other side of the world and the other side of everything. My head is spinning and I am overwhelmed with trying to set up an apartment and get ready to start teaching by Monday. I will live here for a year teaching English composition at Lanzhou Jiaotong University. The students are in a special program where they transfer to Iowa State as juniors and my job is to give them the same level of writing course they would have to take at ISU but the difference is that these students are way below that entry level and they are not immersed in an English speaking environment so it's a harder job and a much harder living situation. I'm still trying to get settled, but this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life.
Google earth Lanzhou and see the huge pollution cloud above the deep valley. A lot of it is ultra fine sand from the Gobi dessert, a lot of it is coal smoke from all the cooking fires and heating, and there are also heavy metals from the chemical plants along the river (the Huang He or Yellow River). I'm in frickin outer Mongolia with many non-Han ethnic minorities and dirt poor under-served populations. 3.3 million people live wedged lengthwise along this East/West bend in the river where the mountains rise precipitously on both sides, trapping the grime and haze, making this one of the world's most polluted cities. The travel guide books all mention Lanzhou because it is a railway hub and an historical outpost on the silk road, but they tactfully suggest moving on as quickly as possible. My goal is to find a reason for them to add a new chapter that gives this place at least a day on the itinerary.
For now, 5 days into living here, just trying to get the simplest food or household necessity is a huge task because Chinese is really hard to pick up and none of the other customary body language or basic transactions are in common so I can't even mime and point my way through it. Today I did better than the past four days. I made it to market and bought fresh produce and spices and eggs from the street vendors. Tomorrow I'll try to get a cell phone - an impossible task on my own, I'll get help - but I have to have one to be able to order drinking water and to be able to call a Chinese speaker if I get in a jam or get picked up by the red army (just kidding, I hope).
Google earth Lanzhou and see the huge pollution cloud above the deep valley. A lot of it is ultra fine sand from the Gobi dessert, a lot of it is coal smoke from all the cooking fires and heating, and there are also heavy metals from the chemical plants along the river (the Huang He or Yellow River). I'm in frickin outer Mongolia with many non-Han ethnic minorities and dirt poor under-served populations. 3.3 million people live wedged lengthwise along this East/West bend in the river where the mountains rise precipitously on both sides, trapping the grime and haze, making this one of the world's most polluted cities. The travel guide books all mention Lanzhou because it is a railway hub and an historical outpost on the silk road, but they tactfully suggest moving on as quickly as possible. My goal is to find a reason for them to add a new chapter that gives this place at least a day on the itinerary.
For now, 5 days into living here, just trying to get the simplest food or household necessity is a huge task because Chinese is really hard to pick up and none of the other customary body language or basic transactions are in common so I can't even mime and point my way through it. Today I did better than the past four days. I made it to market and bought fresh produce and spices and eggs from the street vendors. Tomorrow I'll try to get a cell phone - an impossible task on my own, I'll get help - but I have to have one to be able to order drinking water and to be able to call a Chinese speaker if I get in a jam or get picked up by the red army (just kidding, I hope).
Beijing by Bicycle in 24 Hours
The sun rises very early in this part of the country. It sets very early too, which is why last night getting caught in a rainstorm at 5pm was all the more dangerous, I was losing daylight, too, and if you can possibly conceive how insane the traffic is, try negotiating it in bad light on a junky 3rd world bike. The brakes on this thing are questionable at best, add grime and slime (which is what rain turns into on a Beijing street) and you have a recipe for the other ubiquitous 3rd world bike feature: bent forks. Thankfully, I maneuvered around all obstacles, not the least of which was getting hopelessly lost.
Beijing is a grid with the cardinal quadrants marked, so it is easy to navigate on a map. But each of those giant blocks has a medieval labyrinth of *hutongs* - alleyways no bigger than a pig on a bicycle and never straight for more than 20-30 meters. The alley walls are a quilt of brick and mortar dating from a couple 100 years to wet concrete with absolutely no logic as to why one is superseding the other. Honestly, much of the new stuff is falling apart and much of the old stuff is bullet proof and the piebald effect creates a feeling of carelessness. Nostalgia for historical preservation is so bourgeois. People stand and sit around the apertures in these walls, spitting, yelling, and sweeping little piles of debris off the dirt and shit caked alley with a dilapidated brick cubicle on one side and in-progress concrete block construction on the other and the debris from both choking the narrow path causing no end of beep beep beep from the electric bikes and *san lun che* (three wheel delivery scooters) My bike does not have a bell. Whistling works.
Beijing is a grid with the cardinal quadrants marked, so it is easy to navigate on a map. But each of those giant blocks has a medieval labyrinth of *hutongs* - alleyways no bigger than a pig on a bicycle and never straight for more than 20-30 meters. The alley walls are a quilt of brick and mortar dating from a couple 100 years to wet concrete with absolutely no logic as to why one is superseding the other. Honestly, much of the new stuff is falling apart and much of the old stuff is bullet proof and the piebald effect creates a feeling of carelessness. Nostalgia for historical preservation is so bourgeois. People stand and sit around the apertures in these walls, spitting, yelling, and sweeping little piles of debris off the dirt and shit caked alley with a dilapidated brick cubicle on one side and in-progress concrete block construction on the other and the debris from both choking the narrow path causing no end of beep beep beep from the electric bikes and *san lun che* (three wheel delivery scooters) My bike does not have a bell. Whistling works.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Plans are made to be messed with
I planned on traveling light. 140 pounds later that idea was out the window. I planned on getting many things done before I left - thanks Hogan for picking up the slack. I planned on studying "Chinese for Dummies," but I found amazing ways to do anything else. I did NOT plan on spending 6 hours in Chicago O'Hare waiting to get to Beijing.
I'm told by anyone who has traveled to China, get used to plans changing. Even better, don't really make plans you expect to keep. This delay right now is a particularly United Airlines-type of disruption, one that has nothing to do with any Chinese zeitgeist, but I'm prepared for a year in which having an itinerary pinned to dates or, god forbid, times is a recipe for aggravation. So here I am, whipping out the credit card and buying time online so that I can fill you in on my 'great adventure.' I offer my piercing insights on killing time in an airport bar.
First, it took me almost 40 years to figure out that throwing money at problems makes them go away. This $9 glass of Goose Island Matilda and $10 internet access junket has greatly ameliorated my current discomfort. It's really only dessert for the $150 main course I ate for overweight baggage (one bag was 70 lbs. instead 50). Honestly, before I learned how to buy my way out of problems, I used to subject myself to doing the math: Calculating how many real things in the real world I could buy for the same amount and fretting over what a rip off it is. But now, I watch my expenditures carefully when and where I have choices so that when I don't have a choice I think, "Yo tengo efectivo, yo quiero este, en punto!" And it's done. Mmmm, I recommend the Matilde, it's so smooth it deadens the metallic squawk of the boardingcallwhitecourtesytellephone loudspeaker.
Next, to quote U. Utah Phillips, "You've got to mess with people! Otherwise they might slip into a cryonic tropor!" You've got to chap their hides, ride them, and put them in the barn wet. When I overhear some blowhard spouting and unpalatable aphorism, I call him on the carpet in a heartbeat. People love it when you mess with their friends (who clearly are asking for it) and it is your entree into no end of conversation. The guy next to me came in with (to my trained eye what is clearly) a band of traveling musicians. His reply to his bandmate soliciting to buy the next round was, "Another Chardonney," to which I had to say (finally, because they were talking so as to gain my attention as all band guys do), "Real friends don't make their friends order chardonney at a beer pub." "That sounds like you're trying to give me shit." "No, I'm trying to help you improve your relationships." And so forth. These guys are Robert Cray's band touring at the moment from Canada to Kansas City with a stopover to make my day in Chicago. Most of them are Berkeley/Oakland through and through and shared the Eli's Mile High Club memories of Eddie Ray Rhythym and Blues with Oscar Myers, Troyce Keys, Beverly Stovall, and the Ratskeller Band from Blake's. Damn, that blood runs thick. By the time they had to get their plane, I was wishing I was heading to KC for some ribs and blues. Damn, those boys are carrying the torch and bringing it. And the point is, you got to mess with people. Otherwise, they might pigeonhole you and you'll put them in a box and we might miss what's right there under the surface. Those guys have lived and shared my world and we found each other at this time at this (options forsaken) place and we never would have known it if I didn't MESS WITH PEOPLE.
Boarding call, see you in Beijing!
I'm told by anyone who has traveled to China, get used to plans changing. Even better, don't really make plans you expect to keep. This delay right now is a particularly United Airlines-type of disruption, one that has nothing to do with any Chinese zeitgeist, but I'm prepared for a year in which having an itinerary pinned to dates or, god forbid, times is a recipe for aggravation. So here I am, whipping out the credit card and buying time online so that I can fill you in on my 'great adventure.' I offer my piercing insights on killing time in an airport bar.
First, it took me almost 40 years to figure out that throwing money at problems makes them go away. This $9 glass of Goose Island Matilda and $10 internet access junket has greatly ameliorated my current discomfort. It's really only dessert for the $150 main course I ate for overweight baggage (one bag was 70 lbs. instead 50). Honestly, before I learned how to buy my way out of problems, I used to subject myself to doing the math: Calculating how many real things in the real world I could buy for the same amount and fretting over what a rip off it is. But now, I watch my expenditures carefully when and where I have choices so that when I don't have a choice I think, "Yo tengo efectivo, yo quiero este, en punto!" And it's done. Mmmm, I recommend the Matilde, it's so smooth it deadens the metallic squawk of the boardingcallwhitecourtesytellephone loudspeaker.
Next, to quote U. Utah Phillips, "You've got to mess with people! Otherwise they might slip into a cryonic tropor!" You've got to chap their hides, ride them, and put them in the barn wet. When I overhear some blowhard spouting and unpalatable aphorism, I call him on the carpet in a heartbeat. People love it when you mess with their friends (who clearly are asking for it) and it is your entree into no end of conversation. The guy next to me came in with (to my trained eye what is clearly) a band of traveling musicians. His reply to his bandmate soliciting to buy the next round was, "Another Chardonney," to which I had to say (finally, because they were talking so as to gain my attention as all band guys do), "Real friends don't make their friends order chardonney at a beer pub." "That sounds like you're trying to give me shit." "No, I'm trying to help you improve your relationships." And so forth. These guys are Robert Cray's band touring at the moment from Canada to Kansas City with a stopover to make my day in Chicago. Most of them are Berkeley/Oakland through and through and shared the Eli's Mile High Club memories of Eddie Ray Rhythym and Blues with Oscar Myers, Troyce Keys, Beverly Stovall, and the Ratskeller Band from Blake's. Damn, that blood runs thick. By the time they had to get their plane, I was wishing I was heading to KC for some ribs and blues. Damn, those boys are carrying the torch and bringing it. And the point is, you got to mess with people. Otherwise, they might pigeonhole you and you'll put them in a box and we might miss what's right there under the surface. Those guys have lived and shared my world and we found each other at this time at this (options forsaken) place and we never would have known it if I didn't MESS WITH PEOPLE.
Boarding call, see you in Beijing!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Packing for the other side of the world
In "Coming Home Crazy," Bill Holm has an entire chapter on how and why a Swiss Army Knife (with ten different features) is essential in China. Check. That one is on the list. But what books are essential, Bill? What creature comforts will I find essential on the other side of the world? What is the criteria for material possessions to be essential? And don't I wish I could be all ascetic about it and not want anything.
And my gorilla proportions (knuckle-dragging arms, line-backer shoulders); how will I find a shirt to fit? or shoes for my Sasquatch feet? Surely I can't carry all the clothing I will need for four seasons over 10 months in the arid mountains of Outer Mongolia? What will make the cut?
Should I bring my little honey of a Mac, or abandon it and try my luck with whatever the University gives me, replete with buggy bootleg versions of every software ever made? Alas, I have 6 days to decide before I'm free from the burden of having any choices at all. I'm preparing to surrender to a universe where everything is an approximation.
And my gorilla proportions (knuckle-dragging arms, line-backer shoulders); how will I find a shirt to fit? or shoes for my Sasquatch feet? Surely I can't carry all the clothing I will need for four seasons over 10 months in the arid mountains of Outer Mongolia? What will make the cut?
Should I bring my little honey of a Mac, or abandon it and try my luck with whatever the University gives me, replete with buggy bootleg versions of every software ever made? Alas, I have 6 days to decide before I'm free from the burden of having any choices at all. I'm preparing to surrender to a universe where everything is an approximation.
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