China Nine

We leave Sunday (Oct 31)for two weeks to Beijing, Xian, and Lhasa. I will let you know when we get home that we made it okay, but don't look for another newsletter for about three weeks. We are looking forward to the trip and especially to the fact that my beloved bride will meet us in Beijing, along with Rita's mother and Robert's mother and brother.  Please don't send any e-mails to me until after November 14, as the internet runs rather slowly here, and I would appreciate not having messages backed up when I get back. I will send an e-mail notifying you of our return.

We will begin this installment with yet another adventure from Matthew Hillestad:

Rocking Zhaoqing: The Chinese View of Foreigners

I've been very busy the last month with teaching classes, visiting students, and a bit of touring so it's been difficult to write individually to everyone. I have over a dozen adventures I haven't had the chance to compose that will paint a vivid picture of Chinese/Americans. First, I want to show the Chinese perception of Americans. In orientation, prepatory to coming to China, we were told to expect a lot of attention. This was no lie. Many Chinese display a fascination with the West that is exemplified in this story about three hours spent dancing!.

The first day in Zhaoqing, several Chinese students asked us to go dancing. Afraid of being viewed as a "not happening guy" there seemed little alternative. Four days later ten Chinese and five American students entered "The Club." Eyes of nearly a thousand people seemed to follow our party as we wound our way through the crowds. A manager brought us to a couple open tables in the back corner, and we all sat down and began to drink. Thirty minutes passed as the "Can you decipher what I'm saying over this blaring music?" game was played. My thoughts began to drift to the over-intoxicated man visibly having the time of his life all alone on the mammoth dance floor. Secure in the knowledge that any public humiliation experienced would only have to be endured four months, I feigned only weak resistance as two Chinese students grabbed me by the wrists and dragged me onto the dance floor. The huge metal plates making up the floor were resting on springs causing it, and us, to jostle back and forth, up and down. Between the moving floor and the fast, relentless beat of the music there seemed only one course of action: smile, wave the arms, spin a few times, and do my best John Travolta imitation. Within minutes the dance floor began filling until it harbored more than six hundred people. I found myself encircled by forty or so men all studying me. Their poker faces revealed nothing, and I began to wonder if I wasn't in for a lesson that had nothing to do with dancing.

Finally one of them smiled and held up his hand. Guessing the appropriate response, I gave him a high-five. This seemed to suffice and another man held his hand up and then another. Soon hands began slapping together throughout the dance floor. A dancer is one claim I cannot make, so it was comforting to see my audience doing no better. With eyes stinging from sweat, I vainly attempted to clear my blurred vision when I chanced to notice a man execute a move that was distinctly John Travolta--poorly executed but unmistakable. Awareness struck--the arm waves, spins, and body gyrations all around were perfect imitations of my own arm waves, spins, and body gyrations. They say that everyone is a star at least for 15 minutes, and with the other Americans coming out on the floor I sensed that I was on minute 14. Trying to nurse this ego trip for everything I could get, I did what any partially intoxicated man, suffering from surging adrenaline and inflated self-importance, would do--I threw my arms high above my head, started jumping with teeth bared and screamed with all the ferocity my lungs would offer. This bold move paid dividends. It was no small relief to see the audience throw up their arms, start jumping with bared teeth, and screaming with a ferocity that, as it spread, drowned out the music like a million angry bees. The huge metal plates making up the floor were on springs, which bounced and vibrated. As the roar continued, the people began jumping in sync. The floor turned from a disconcerting vibration into a springboard that literally flung one in the air if their beat was off. The flashing lights, noise, and bouncing turned surreal. The unsettling image of an entire room full of insane people being shot up into space filled my thoughts.

The roar faded, but the dance seemed to take on a life of its own. Like an actor from the once number one TV series "Different Strokes," as other Americans began breaking out their moves, I found myself left with only my words for comfort, "Who cares about that stupid stop light--its so superficial. After all, am I not like the Elvis of rock'n roll, the Johnny Carson of late night TV, the Michael Jordan of basketball." Winding our way through the people and out of the club (to make our college's 11:30pm curfew) we were slapping and shaking hands whole way. "Sure, maybe a has-been in their eyes, but I'll be back," I heard myself murmur, "Oh yeah! I'm coming back!"

Again, I hope you enjoyed Matthew's story. I remember when it happened, and he and I talked about it. He expressed his concern to me as to why we are imitated. It is not because we are good role models or people who have accomplished great things. It is simply because we are Americans, and many here make the assumption that, if it is American, then it must be good. Matthew and I talked about how frightening this is, and what sort of a responsibility it places on us. We came to realize just how much our situation demands of our moral character. We are not free to do whatever we darn well please, but we must put forth our best effort (morally) under these conditions. There are 1.3 billion people watching us and hanging on to every word we speak! Never before have any of us been placed in such a position. It is both daunting, and inspiring!

Again, I need to back up to tell you an interesting story. It was about two weeks ago on a Monday. I received an e-mail from Bob Skottegaard who was inquiring about student rebellion and protest against the establishment. I assured Bob that there were no signs of rebellion--these students respect and obey authority without question. Later that morning when the American students went to their Chinese Language class, they were informed by Mrs. Guo that the boys (Matt, Robert, and Scott) would no longer be allowed to visit the girl's dormitories at lunch time, until I had talked to Mr. Wei and convinced him that our "Lunch in the Dorm" program was good for all the students. There is a school policy that says no boys are allowed in any of the girls' dormitories (girls are allowed in the boys' dorms), and apparently a student complained that it wasn't fair if the American boys could, but the Chinese boys couldn't (does this sound American, or what).

Well, Mrs. Guo said that they could still go today, but that I would need to see Mr. Wei in the afternoon. So, at lunchtime we headed down to the canteen to get our food and find our escorts back to the dorms. I got my food and found my escorts, and we headed back to the 6th floor of building 13. I had just sat down when the "riot" began. Literally dozens of girls came rushing into the dorm room screaming "They won't let the boys in! Do something!" I did what I do best, I thought. "If I go down there (6 floors), I probably can't accomplish much (since I can't speak Chinese, and the gatekeeper doesn't speak English), and then I have to climb back up to the 6th floor again. So, I told the girls, "Why don't you just go down there and eat with them outside, and I will straighten this thing out with Mr. Wei this afternoon." This was not the answer they were looking for! I ended up spending lunch with all these girls talking about justice, fairness, etc. etc. and every once in a while one of the girls would stick her head over the balcony and scream something down to the gatekeeper (an obscenity, I'm sure). We very nearly had a major situation, and I discovered just how rebellious these students can become when they think they have been wronged. Well, Mr. Wei didn't budge on the position, so now, when the boys are scheduled to have lunch in a girls' dorm, they just meet them in the canteen and have lunch with them outside.

You are now wondering perhaps, how did I get into the dorm? How do I continue to go into the dorms? The answer is simple: I am a Teacher! One of these days I am going to try walking across the Xi Jiang (West River). Being a Teacher does carry weight here. We begin this week's adventures with Monday, October 25. We so impressed the people at Xi Jiang University that they asked us to come back and help them start their own English Corner. Rumor has it that next year Xi Jiang University and Zhaoqing Institute of Education (where we are) will merge into one school (and you thought mergers were just an American thing). So, I think it is a good idea to lay the foundation of a good start with the University.

We were suppose to have a group of our students meet us to take us over there at 6 PM. They didn't show up. I was suppose to meet our tour guide for our upcoming trip at 6:30, so at 6:15 I sent the gang ahead without me and I waited for Peter. Pamala also stayed behind because she was showing Mrs. Guo some pictures and didn't have the heart to tell her that they had to stop (gotta love Mrs. Guo).  At 6:45 I gave up waiting for Peter, so I grabbed Pamala (Mrs. Guo had left), and we headed off. We caught a 10 bus to Xi Jiang, but when we got there, we didn't have a clue as to where to go. Well, we sort of did, we headed over to the building where they teach English, and out in front we spotted several clusters of people (one American student with a cluster of Chinese students gathered around them). As we got closer, it did not take long for us to develop our own cluster. "Where are you from?" "What is your name?" "How long have you been in China?" "When will you go back?" "Have you been to China before?" "Do you like China?" "Do you like Chinese food?" "What is your favorite?" "What do you think about Zhaoqing?" "How can I improve my English?" We all know the questions by heart; every student we meet has to ask these questions for themselves (even if the next student has just asked the question and you answered) and we have each pretty well established our own ways of answering these questions over and over and over again. One of the reasons, I'm guessing that two students can ask the identical question right in a row has to deal with the difficulty of working in a foreign language. While one student is asking a question and you are answering, the other one is trying to figure out in their head how to ask the question. They are so busy concentrating that they are tuned out to what the other student is asking, and what you are saying (they try so hard to get their questions right). The best we can do is understand what they are going through, be polite, and answer every question with a smile. We finally got out of there at about 8:30 (all the students were suppose to be in class at 7:30). We made many new friends, and I'm sure we will have many new visitors in our remaining weeks in Zhaoqing.

Tuesday the freshman students (what they call 99 class) had a military drill competition. Every year the new students have two weeks of military drill training at the beginning of the school year. Shortly after that, they have a competition between the classes and award prizes. The first prize is 100 Yuan (about $12.50) that the students split between them. We decided to go and watch. There are two English classes that were competing: Mrs. Hou's and Mrs. Guo's. When we got to the playground, Mrs. Guo spotted us, and had some of her students go and fetch some chairs for us. While we were waiting, the administrators spotted us and they sent someone over to fetch me so I could sit at the table with the judges and the honored guests. Actually, this was a bad place for me to be sitting, because as the English classes took their turns at the drills, I was sitting right in front of them, and I could tell I was a bit of a distraction. I thought that both classes did very well, although neither class won a prize. After the competition I was asked to present the award for second place, which went to a music class. The tension was finally over (all the students took this very seriously), and the students let loose for the evening (somewhat like what happens at home after a graduation).

Tuesday evening I had an appointment with my third group of students from my class. They were Zara (Liang Jing), Sunday (Wu Zhi Xing), Wendy (Lin Hai Ying), Angel (Zhang Zhi Lan), Gary (Fu Zheng), and Fanny (Chen Hui Ying). They took me to a restaurant downtown to eat. On the way they led me past Lotus Lake, a park downtown with walkways and pagodas on it. The lake is filled with lotus plants, and Liang Jing told me that in the summer, when the lotus are in bloom, it is very beautiful. I thought it was pretty nice even in the fall! 

We got to the restaurant (a little ma and pa place), and the owners kicked a group of men out of the backroom to make way for us. I am a foreigner, and this was the only air-conditioned room in the place. The heat wasn't bothering me, and I felt bad for the guys, but the students were excited about having the air-conditioning so I didn't object too much (especially since they were just drinking beer and smoking back there). The students wanted to know what I wanted to eat, and I told them to order whatever they wanted and I would eat it--the purpose of this assignment is for me to learn about them. They ordered seven dishes which included a vegetable soup, a green vegetable, sweet and sour pork, some beef, spicy tofu, rice, and the bizarre dish of the day--duck head. I've eaten a lot of duck since I've been here, but I had not eaten the head before. It is served on the jaw, and little did I know that it could be so palatable. I even ate a tongue! Bit it right off the jaw! There is always a new experience in China! The conversation was also enlightening, and it was fun to listen to each student, in their turn, tell me their story.

After dinner we strolled through the streets heading back to the bus stop. We stopped to climb the ancient wall of Zhaoqing and have a look from the top. Looking north, one could see New Zhaoqing, with all the modern buildings and streets. Looking south one saw Old Zhaoqing with all the tenements in disrepair. This is the poorer part of town, and there were people out and about, but there was no amazement that there was a foreigner in their midst--they had other things to worry about, like eating.

We made it back to the bus stop, and headed back to school. We got back around 8 PM. All students are suppose to be in study classes between 7:30 and 9:00 PM, and so the school locks the front gate--no students are allowed in or out. When we arrived the students remembered, and started to worry that they would get in trouble. "Mei won ti", said I (No problem),  "Wo shi laoshi!" (I am a teacher!). As we approached the gate, some other students (non-English Dept) decided they would try their luck at getting in with us. The gatekeeper opened the gate, and I counted off my six (yi, er, san si, wu, liu), when my six had passed through the gate, I stopped counting and turned. The gatekeeper stopped the tag-alongs and locked them out of the gate. My students were impressed (They did not know that I had gotten permission from their Master Teacher and Mr. Wei to do this).

On Wednesday morning Rachel and I met her teacher, Mrs. Hou, to visit a kindergarten. Students are in kindergarten for 3 years beginning at the age of three. Their parents drop them off at 7 AM and don't pick them up until 5 PM. We saw a wide range of activities and exercises. It is fun to watch Rachel interact with the children. Rachel is 5'10" tall, yet she can get down to their level rather easily. And, of course, she speaks the best Chinese of any of us. In one classroom she was talking to three students, and she had two of them roaring with laughter, while the third one kept busy at her work, totally oblivious to what the others were doing. 

The kindergarten was equipped with large bedrooms for the children's afternoon naps, a large dance hall, and a large art room. Each classroom is equipped with several activity centers where kids can pretend to cook, play with connecting blocks, color, paint, or work with flashcards. The older kids also have an area with desks and chairs. In one room the children were learning how to draw panda bears. It was an interesting experience, and, of course, the whole time we were there, a woman was following us around with a camera snapping pictures (my guess is that we will be used on their next advertising brochure--our kindergarten has foreign teachers!).

After the kindergarten visit, Mrs. Hou took Rachel and me to the City Government Center. She has a friend, Mr. Wu, who works there for the Guangdong International Chamber of Commerce. He gave us a brief overview of the work they do to try and attract overseas investment, and then he gave us a tour of the grounds. We stopped at the science center where we met the director and the person in charge of popular science. Popular science is the department in charge of trying to encourage children to take an interest in science. They were all very interested in Minnesota. They asked many questions, and we tried to answer them all. We drank tea, and then we headed back to campus.

Wednesday afternoon I taught Mrs. Hou's class. Her parents were in town, and since she took us on the field trip, it was the least I could do for her. Her students are first year students here, and they were the one's who hosted the party on Sunday night. They were excited to see me! They were not aware that I was coming. They are so attentive and eager to learn. So much has happened this week that I cannot think of what we worked on in class (it is now Friday night), but there was a reference in their book to Edgar Allan Poe. That gave me an idea for later, and I found The Raven on the internet and printed it for future use.

That future use came Thursday morning. Mrs. Guo asked me to teach her class so she could go downtown to get student ID cards for the ARCC students so they can get into the local parks for free. They were working on the unit dealing with Indirect Speech (reporting what someone or something else says), and there is a short section in the unit on poetry. So, as we finished that part in the unit (we still had twenty minutes left for class), I told them about Poe, and then started to read The Raven, stopping to report what each part of the poem was saying. We got through the first eight stanzas when time ran out. The students were on the edge of their seat! They were horribly disappointed that we were not going to finish the poem! I told Mrs. Guo what I had done, and that we hadn't finished the poem, so she invited me back on Friday morning at 7:40 to finish. How could I pass that up! So, the next morning Mrs. Guo and headed back to her class, and we finished the poem. At the end of each stanza I would pause and let the students finish it with a resounding NEVERMORE! All the time Mrs. Guo was taking notes. After class she told me that, while in college, she took a class on English poetry, and that she had read The Raven, but had never understood what it meant, and she had never found anyone who could explain it to her (not that I am an expert). So, she was perhaps more excited than anyone to finally discover something about it.

If there was anyone more excited than Mrs. Guo, it may have been me. Up until now, while this has been an incredibly enjoyable experience, it has not been the most intellectually stimulating. I find myself constantly talking in very simple English, and it is hard to talk about anything deep when there is such a language barrier (and, yes, I understand that it is my fault for not knowing Chinese). This discussion of the poem allowed me that intellectual stimulation, and at the same time it served the needs of the Chinese students, by introducing them to new words (I defined them all), and to a beautiful piece of American Heritage.

The night before did not make this task very easy however. I had made a date with Shuman Ho, the school's Renaissance Man to discuss the American education (not that I am an expert), but he wanted to pick my brains for a journal article he is writing. He picked me up on his motor-scooter at about 8:30 and took me downtown to The Dynasty Hotel (one of the fancier ones in Zhaoqing). We sat and drank tea and ate french fries and talked about education in both the United States and China. It also gave me the opportunity to listen to Shuman's story. How he likes to come to the Dynasty (his sister is a lobby manager), and sit in the air-conditioning (it's good to know that the heat bothers the Chinese), and talk with his friends. He shared with me how expensive it is to send his daughter to school and the pressure she is under (she is 11) for an upcoming exam that will determine which Middle School she will attend (the better you do on the exam, the better quality school you go to). We talked about music (he plays several instruments), and we talked about how even in China the pressure is on to privatize the schools (including Zhaoqing Institute of Education).

We left the hotel at 11:30 and headed back to the campus. And that is when I saw for the first time how the really poor live. In the grassy median on the highway back to school we must have passed two dozen people sleeping in the grass. I have seen the poor sections of the city, and on our trip to Kunming I saw the peasants working ever so hard in the fields, but this was the first sign of homelessness that I have witnessed here. People with no place to call home. I knew it had to exist, but I did not know that it was so close to home.  I did not get to bed until after 12:30, and then I was up at 6:00 to go and teach Mrs. Guo's class.  While Shuman and I were out, the students were very busy back at the school.

I am teaching the ARCC students a Leadership Development Studies class that was developed by Phi Theta Kappa. As part of the class each student must take on a leadership project here in China. Scott Johnston came up with the idea of organizing a "Keep Zhaoqing Beautiful" campaign. The idea caught on so quickly that Rachel also got involved in the project. Thursday night they had their first campus-wide meeting. There were over 200 Chinese students in attendance along with a TV crew from the local news station. Their purpose is to, not only clean up around the campus here, but to raise environmental awareness among the students. It is a terrific project that is giving the Chinese students ownership of the cleanup. The biggest challenge they have faced is keeping the administration from "taking over" and just having the workers do it. But, they have made it clear to them why it must be a student-initiated project to make it successful. They have done a wonderful job, and I think this is a project that will last far beyond our short stay here.

Well, I had so much fun reading The Raven to Mrs. Guo's class that I decided to use it in my Oral English class on Friday afternoon. Since the class is suppose to focus on the students talking, I had them read it. So, after explaining a little about English poetry, we started on the poem, stanza by stanza. First, I would go through the vocabulary, and then I would read through the stanza. After that I would do a line, and then the students would repeat the line. Finally, I had the students read through the stanza by themselves. It was a hoot! We got through about five stanzas, so we'll have more work to do when I get back from our two-week trip.

Friday evening Mrs. Krim, Forrest, and I were invited to Mrs. Hou's home for dinner. However, she called Mrs. Krim while I was in class and said that her husband had to leave town on business and would not be there, so Mrs. Hou was going to take us to a restaurant. I would not have minded just rescheduling the dinner, but some people do not pass up a free dinner when it is offered. Mrs. Hou picked us up in a taxi, got us home in a taxi, got us fed and paid for everything. I felt bad for her, but I knew that this was the expectation, both on her part, and on the part of others. I will make it up to her. As for the dinner--Hmmm! We ate some seaweed soup with pig lung (this is the same woman who fed me pig's blood porridge for breakfast once), some small little birds (the Cantonese eat anything that flies except airplanes), some green vegetables, shrimp, and snake! Always a new experience in China!

It is now Saturday, October 30. Our guests (my wife, Rita's mother, and Robert's mother and brother) are in Beijing safe and sound. We leave tomorrow by train and will arrive Monday at about noon. Can't wait to see Denise!

Til next time.

Zai jian,
Gordy

PS I talked to Denise tonight, they made it to Beijing safely.