Part 7 - Hitting the Great Wall
In my pre-China research about the quality of education for foreign students, I frequently came across references to “eastern style teaching methods.” I got some inkling about how this worked and thought “Hey, if those students are producing all of our electronics, making the majority of our cars and buying up most of our debt, it must have something going for it.”
Western systems have developed a give-and-take approach to teaching that actively involves the student and encourages questions and discussion. Political correctness may have the system out of whack right now, but overall, I think it’s a pretty good approach. It worked for me.
The eastern method is perhaps closer to the old, Catholic school method, sans rulers. Or, to paraphrase my grandmother, “students are there to be seen, not heard.” Questions are rarely tolerated because they interrupt the flow of “repeat after me” and the teacher’s talking to himself in Chinese. When we get to the interrogation part of the day, the teacher enjoys firing off questions in full speed Chinese. For comprehension, we listen to 30 second conversations on a speaker and are asked to select the proper, multiple-choice answer phrase, again, written in Chinese. I got 3 of 20 correct and no one else made me look too bad. I would have gotten far more right by marking “B” every time. Just a reminder for those who have joined us late, this is the second week of classes.
I have never attempted anything this difficult in my life. More advanced students tell us that it will get easier in a few months, but I wonder how many of us will be left at that point. This morning I pondered seeking a transfer to the nuclear engineering program. At least mathematics is universal.
I could easily go off on a venting jag right now, but I’ll try to stick to just a few of the memorable low points of class life so far. When the class was practically in open revolt, one teacher explained that we had to progress at this pace. She added that we would slow down later, when we understood more. Can anyone explain this thought process to me? Go fast when we’re lost and slow down when we know what we’re doing? A little polling revealed that other, similar classes are on lessons 4-6, while we have just completed lesson 10.
One of the few times I felt I was really accomplishing something was when we had an informal pop quiz on the third day. The teacher read words in English and we were to write down the proper Chinese character. Since we usually use Pinyin to learn the pronunciation first and then work on the character, this was a three step process. I remembered the Chinese word, then the character and, finally, wrote down the character correctly. At this point, that was about as likely as a monkey driving a car safely. I was flushed with pride as the teacher strolled by and said “That’s correct, but it is not beautiful!” I picked up a book and took aim at the back of his head as he walked away, but something restrained me.
Our writing lesson the other day consisted of students being called to the blackboard and required to write a character. Most of the victims had the classic deer-in-the-headlight look but did as well or better than I would have. After a pause of a few seconds, the standard response from the teacher was a laugh. I suppose it was good natured, as he tried to get us to laugh along, but he killed a lot of good will.
He belabored the point that even if the character was correct and beautiful, the strokes were made in either the wrong direction or in the wrong order. It’s common to have character consisting of 10-12 lines, dashes, curves and dots. If you make the 9th stroke dot before the 7th stroke curve, it doesn’t matter if everything is correct and beautiful. You’re going to your seat accompanied by laughter. He’s really not that bad of a guy; the frustration just makes it easy to hate him occasionally.
Even with all of these challenges, I realize that I have it the easiest. When the teacher does mutter a clarification or random instruction in anything but Chinese, it is in English. I am the only native English speaker in the class and his is bad enough that I can barely understand him. The other students must really have headaches. Some barely speak English themselves. So far, I’ve identified students from Russia, Latvia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Jordan, Korea, Mongolia and Iceland in my class.
On the ever-amusing administrative front, I’ve yet to claim my student ID booklet, which is like a second passport. I gave up on the line twice already. It moves approximately 1 person every 10 minutes. The traditional method of distribution is to allow one person to the desk (1 of 4) and have him look through all of the ID booklets until he finds his picture. They are not sorted in any fashion. I made it to the head of the line once and, after 15 minutes of looking, was told that I was looking at pictures of Russians and was at the wrong desk. The upside is that I can now swear quite well in Russian.
Since students living on campus need the ID for certain services, they’ll wait in line for hours. Living off campus, I’ve decided to wait until there are only two or three to choose from. With any luck, they will have lost mine and I can get them to reissue it with my proper name. Apparently the advisor liked my middle name of Richard better than Mike and that’s what I’ve been reborn as. After three days of my not answering roll call, the teachers started calling me Mike, or Maike, but the university still thinks of me as good ole Dick.
So, here I am, lost as hell in a sadistic system, where 4 hours of classes and 4-6 hours of study each day leave me feeling like an idiot. In this case, the fact that we’re all lost just isn’t very consoling. That’s quite enough of the self-pity though. A common affliction for expatriates here is called the Bad China Day. Pressure builds until some minor irritation puts you in an anti-China mood for a few hours. I guess I’m just having a Bad-China-Week.
I don’t need therapy yet, but I met a guy at a forums get-together who specializes in counseling expatriates with their adjustment blues. I guess there’s plenty of work. Somehow that makes me feel better already. Every day I see evidence of the need for his services. It seems that most expats who have lived here for a while walk around with a perpetual scowl on their face. I was here a month before classes, so almost every expat I saw fit this profile. I don’t remember a single smile from the bunch.
On the other hand, new arrivals fall into two classes: the people who can’t stop smiling because they’re finally here and the one ones with an extremely dazed look, like they had just been set down by a tornado and they aren’t quite sure where they are. Those are the people that are good for the soul. You feel like you’ve moved a little up the food chain just because you know where to buy electronics and where to take your laundry. Simple achievements I know, but they can mean a lot.
Last Friday I hosted an evening get-together for readers of Chinese Forums.com This is a great place to research anything about living and studying in China and it made it practical for me to be here. We had all talked online and traded advice for some time, so it was good to finally meet each other and trade questions and horror stories. Since the weather has been great, I arranged for us to meet at the International Beer Garden, as it was large and outside. I posted online that I would be wearing a Hawaiian shirt so that everyone could recognize me. As the sun went down at the appointed meeting time, the temperature dropped some 20 degrees and a wind picked up. Just the time to be the guy in a Hawaiian shirt!
After dinner and a few beers, someone bought a 5 oz. bottle of baijiu. Several of us had heard of it before and, being the explorer types, decided to join in. Days later, I downgraded Angelo’s status from friend to suspect. Angelo is a Chinese-American who told me that baijiu is like Chinese bourbon. Knowing me for a bourbon man, maybe he thought this would ensnare me. He thought right.
My immediate description and my description after thinking about it for a week are the same. Baijiu is apparently made by blending a form of Chinese rice wine, like Sake, with an equal portion of turpentine. Thinking that it couldn’t possibly be that bad, we tried it a few more times. I’m told that at one point, someone returned to the table with 5 bottles of this toxin. Needless to say, no one remembers who the culprit was. The only positive effect of this cultural experiment was that I suddenly became very warm in my Hawaiian shirt. I was more comfortable than people wearing jackets.
The down side is that none of us idiots remember getting home. I lost my backpack (fortunately empty to carry books to donate to the other expats). One person’s last recollection was being on stage in a night club making an ass of himself. He woke up without wallet or passport. None of us was any too chipper that weekend.
Thankfully, the baijiu arrived after we had met 25-30 fellow travelers and had a great time. I’m still meeting some of the later arrivals, even though they claim to have met me that night. I think we’ll ban baijiu from any future gatherings.
Studying and such infrequent gatherings must suffice to fill my time. Gone are the days when I could kill an afternoon with a good ballgame. I can’t even kill an hour reading the sports. I just saw a short article on American sports for the first time in six weeks. It described how Peyton Manning led the Colts over the Giants, led by his brother Eli. A one paragraph article for an entire weekend of football. This is going to be a very long fall!
Of course I do get some sports. I received plenty of coverage on the Basketball World Championship, which I rank right along with synchronized swimming. I also saw a lot about the Women’s Softball World Championship (yyaaaawwwwwnnn!) Other than that, it’s soccer, more soccer, cricket and F-1 auto racing, with an occasional oddball thrown in. I’ve even watched a three minute, detailed report on an international men’s field hockey game! As far as I knew, that game had to be played in skirts!
Thinking that I could get more online, I went to the People’s Daily website. I know I can get more from US sites, but by this time I was curious about what the Chinese did pay attention to. On the website, there were 45 sports stories listed in order. The only US story was about the US women’s softball team, and that was as #31! Some notable stories that are apparently more riveting than baseball or football include:
3. Israel to play 2008 soccer qualifier home match in Netherlands for security reasons.
7. Two Uruguayan soccer teams meet each other in 2nd round of a South American
tournament.
17. Bangladeshi Ziauer Rahman places 3rd in Malaysian Open Chess Championship
20. Indonesia vs. Myanmar in finals of a soccer tournament.
29. Egyptian soccer striker to switch from AS Roma to Tottenham Hotspur.
37. Zimbabwe starts selection of national Taekwondo team for the South African
Taekwondo Association games.
I’m not making these up! These are the hot news!
.
I’ll get into the Olympics next time. That’s worth an entire post by itself.
Excerpts from the Learning Curve:
The weather cooled off a little and was finally able to ride in taxi with the windows down. Since I’ve adjusted to Beijing drivers, it took me a few minutes to realize that you never ride with your arm hanging out of the window. There isn’t room for it in traffic.
It takes some time for the human brain to begin thinking clearly at 6:00am. Overnight rain had cleared the dust and smog, leaving my bike seat muddy. I carefully wiped it off with my hand and proceeded to wipe my hand on the seat of my pants. DOH!
.
Loudly blowing one’s nose is offensive to the Chinese. I’ve got a honk that scares geese. I’m screwed. A farmer’s hanky is OK (plugging a nostril and letting fly). Picking is recreational, possibly a sport. Spitting is universal, male and female, often indoors. But a loud blow shows you have no class and makes you an outcast.
Forget about trying to buy DVDs. They’re inevitably pirated, so who knows what you’re going to get, even if it claims to be in English. My most recent acquisition is The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen and cast speaking in Chinese. The need for Chinese subtitles escapes me. A prior purchase was a film starring Selma Hayek and Penelope Cruz. Gotta see that, right? It’s dubbed in Russian with Chinese subtitles. The upside: Selma is really hot when she speaks Russian.
The basket of a parked bicycle is a perfectly good trash can. I’ve started returning the favor.
You’re an idiot if you leave napkins or packaging on the table at an outdoor café. If you don’t throw them on the ground, the waitress will come by and do it for you.
Dubbed shows and subtitles can be amusing. An infomercial dubbed in Chinese is quite funny. Translation is interesting too. A panel discussion on pet etiquette talked about picking up after one’s animal. In three minutes the word “shit” ran across the bottom no less than 15 times. Try that on American TV!
