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
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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.
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