So, I left off at the end of week two, and, as I'm sure you're able to imagine, a heck of a lot has happened. I'd say there have been six chapters of my journey— six distinct emotional, geographical, shifts—so I will write these entries accordingly. I have only written in starts and fits over the past few weeks, so much of the older stuff is already quite hazy; forgive me for any mix-ups or back-tracking. Also, a caveat: some of this is going to be mind-numbingly detailed; I tried to intersperse “what I was thinking” (in my opinion, the interesting part) with “what I was doing” (usually less interesting), but sometimes, I wasn't thinking anything, just trying to get by. For this, I apologize. Now that I'm settled in Changchun, entries will probably become more philosophical in nature, and once I'm fully caught up, hopefully just consisting of a short daily or weekly entry.
Below is the first of the six chapters. I have written two more, but I need to look them over one more time before I hit "post". Chapters four and five, and six will be coming shortly thereafter.
Chapter 1: Teaching Practice
Following the first two weeks of classroom instruction, all of the TEFL trainees began the teaching practice (TP) section of the course (the initialism they used was “TP,” but I could never say it with a straight face). This meant that, instead of all meeting at 8:50 AM every morning in the TEFL room, all of the people teaching on a given day would meet at KFC at 7:25 AM to catch a bus to Nanping Middle School, or in front of Min Run at 8:20 to walk to No. 11 Primary School, etc. We were required to plan and teach six classes, observe 12 officially, and 8 unofficially. The classes were all over Zhuhai—some at the GLV, some across town, some withing walking distance. The ages ranged from 8 -year-olds in public school to working adults trying to learn English for their careers, and everything between.
Sunday night, I was nervous. I was the first one teaching the next morning at the GLV. My students were a group of adults, supposedly from the Zhuhai press. I had a lovely time making my materials, though, just sitting on my bed, listening to music on my laptop (really, the first time I'd listened to music on the trip), and coloring vocabulary posters at my desk. A lovely time, that is, until a gigantic cockroach landed with a 'thwit' on the floor, and scuttled under the bed. I remember sitting there, thinking to myself, “okay, that's cool. As long as it doesn't touch me, I am totally down with peaceful cohabitation with this cockroach.” And I returned to my coloring. It takes a damned long time to think up and color a truly good vocabulary poster (henceforth, “flash card”). Have you ever tried illustrating a dinner party? It ain't easy. My topic the next day was Western eating culture, at the request of the Zhuhai Press. I was happy with the topic—I knew a fair bit about it, and it was a fine opportunity to put a plug in for “chewing with one's mouth closed”, on Jett's behalf. Hell, if anyone's going to start the Mouth-Closed Revolution, it might as well be the Zhuhai Press. My lesson plan was to be a Core dialogueue (which I will explain later), and I had only the roughest of ideas about the students' skill levels. This ignorance about the students' English abilities would become a theme for the teaching practices, and I quickly learned to plan three lessons for every class—the “Zero English Ability” lesson, the “Hello, How Are You, What's Your Favorite Fill-In-The-Blank” lesson, and the “Practically Speaks Better English Than I Do” lesson). Fortunately, dinner parties are filled with all sorts of idioms and jargon that even a fairly well-educated student of English might not know, so that day I was safe.
So there I was, coloring away, when like lightening, I felt something scuttling up my leg, brushing past my leg hairs. I never saw it, but I'm sure it was that damned cockroach. If they can survive long enough to procreate, headless, during a nuclear winter, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to read minds. The only place that was off limits for that cockroach was my leg, and where did it choose to go?
In any case, my impulse was to do a flying quadruple back-flip onto the bed, and swat at my legs for a while; I did nothing to contain said impulse. After a few moments of getting myself together (feeling both embarrassed for being so startled, and at the same time impressed with myself about the quadruple back-flip), I got the rest of my materials and did the rest of my coloring lying on my bed.
That night, I learned a valuable skill. As I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling, I decided I'd run through the class in my head. It was a silly idea, I thought at the time, because who knows how a class will really go? And one little change in the beginning of a lesson effects the course of whole thing, chaos theory style. Still, I went through with it. I walked in and greeted my imaginary students. I introduced the vocabulary, coming up with alternative explanations in case my intended one didn't work, figuring out where I was unprepared or where they might get hung up. I rehearsed the core dialogue in my head. I thought of a wrap-up, and a few backup activities. Then I fell asleep. Of course, my imaginary class didn't go anything like the real thing, as I had expected. But I could imagine the class, right through, start to finish. And the real class went off with nary a hitch. In the future, I would have classes that I couldn't imagine, and then I knew I was in trouble, because without fail, those during those classesI was at my worst.
I got to the TEFL classroom about an hour early. It was dark, but I didn't turn the lights on. I just stood at the head of the classroom and rehearsed. Over and over again, the impossible millions of permutations running through my head. I was dressed up in the finest clothes I had—earth-green dress pants, a green button-down shirt with silver cuff links, a leather belt, and leather dress shoes. I had a few bites of rice in the GLV dining hall, but I didn't want to eat too much. My first student came in an hour early, while I was still standing at the head of the darkened TEFL classroom. Especially with a new class, early students create one of the most awkward situations, because you don't want to launch into the introductions you're about to do with the rest of the class, but you don't want to ignore them, either.
Class started at 8:00. Apparently there had been some confusion about the starting time, since some students were half an hour early, and a few didn't arrive until ten or fifteen minutes into the class. People just kept showing up at a trickle. By 7:55, perhaps 6 of my 8 students were there, sitting at the table. Normally, the TEFL-room table was huge—enough to seat twenty or so TEFL students. But it was made out of many segmented desks; since my class this morning was so small, we split the uber-table into two pieces – a bit less than half of the table for my small class, and the remaining segments for the three other TEFL trainees who were observing me from the back of the classroom. Since we had five minutes until 8:00, I thought I'd use the time to feel the class out a bit. So we started to chat.
It was a lovely and very enlightening conversation. It turned out that only three of them worked for the press. There was one girl who didn't look more than 15 years old, who was moving to Canada with her parents. There was a businessman. One woman just wanted to learn English. They were of very different skill levels, too – the businessman had a great vocabulary, while the one who just wanted English could barely speak at all. I was extremely worried about the Canada girl at first, because she was so quiet, but she knew a lot more English than she let on.
The TEFL-instructed class goes like this: you begin with the 'warmer'. This can be anything – a game, introductions, just asking about the weather. It's just to focus the class and get them, well, warmed up. Then comes the 'context-setting'. I didn't understand how important this was when I first learned about it in class, but now I realize it is the entire key to learning language. I have watched a great many teachers teach, at this point, and I now realize that most teachers don't know to, or don't know how to do it. Context-setting is exactly what it sounds like – it is giving parameters to the language that will be used and taught that day. It eliminates the the need for explanations – a verbal explanation is the worst enemy of a student of English. The key to context-setting is examples. This very day in Changchun, I was explaining the concept of 'formal' and 'informal'. If I had stood at the head of the classroom and said, “formal speech is what you use in polite or fancy situations, and informal speech is the opposite” I would have drawn a classroom full of blank stares. Instead, I went about it from all sides. I elicited some greetings from the students, then categorized them as formal or informal. I gave situations – if you're talking to your friend, you use informal speech. If you're talking to a police officer, you use formal speech. If you own a store, you use formal speech to talk to your customers.” Then, you check for comprehension—I showed them pictures of formal and informal situations, and asked them to tell me which each picture was. And by the end, they all understood. I kept asking throughout class:
“Are these people friends or strangers?”
“Strangers!”
“Good, and where are they?”
“At a company, in an office!”
“Good! So, is this formal or informal?”
“Formal!”
And so on.
So in context setting, you set the scene (for my first class, “a dinner party”), and introduce the day's vocabulary. After context setting comes the 'core content'. The main form of core content taught at TEFL is the 'Core dialogueue' (CD). Ah, Core dialogue! Thou broker of discontent! Thy insipid breath doth blunt the keenest minds, and at thy touch doth even ruddy Creativity become a pallid corpse! Like churlish mist upon a windowpane do you bedim clear virgin Acumen, and sully Perspicacity's sweet fragrance!
Okay, so CD isn't as bad as all that. But it does get a bit tedious. And we did spend a lot of time making fun of it. The way Core dialogueue works is this: the teacher prepares a six-line dialogue. He reads the dialogue aloud twice for the whole class, jumping back and forth to represent the two different people (who were introduced in the 'context setting', and who, for the purposes of example, I will name Amy and Bob). That stage is called Teacher/Teacher, or T/T. Then, he reads the first two lines twice. He takes the role of Amy, and instructs a student to take the role of Bob. And they recite the first two lines of the dialogue. This is called Teacher/Student, or T/S. This he does with two different students. Then comes Student/Teacher (S/T) – a student becomes Amy, and the teacher, Bob. S/T happens twice, with two different students. Then, a student takes the role of Amy, and the teacher becomes Bob, and again, they rehearse the first two lines. Finally comes Student/Student (S/S). I'm sure you can guess. Then you write the first two lines on the board.
That was for the first two lines. This is also done for the second pair of lines, and the third pair of lines, and then for the whole thing.
Then comes substitution. You replace three words within Amy's three lines of the dialogue. For example, if Amy were saying, “I like eating soup,” you might replace “soup” with “hamburgers.”
Then, you repeat the entire process.
Then, you make another round of substitutions. Repeat.
The point of a core dialogue is to make the students memorize speech in a natural pattern, and to that end, it is effective – by the end of a CD lesson, you can say the dialogue in your sleep. In fact, you probably will – you'll be having dreams about it.
As I mentioned, the Core dialogue became the butt of many of our jokes. Every simple conversation became a CD.
Trainee 1: “Hey, Mitch, where are you going for dinner tonight?”
Trainee 2: “I-am-going-to-the-restaurant.”
Trainee 1 (getting it): “Why- are- you- going- to- the- restaurant?”
Trainee 2: “Because- I- want- to- eat.”
Trainee 1: “What-do- you- want- to-eat?”
Trainee 2: “I- want- to- eat-some-celery.”
And so on.
At the end of a class, you are supposed to review the vocabulary, and perhaps play a game. That is the TEFL-taught method. And that is what I was supposed to do with this first class of mine, on that fine Monday morning.
I figured the schmoozing I did with the students counted as the warmer, so shortly after 8:00 AM, I began to model the vocabulary – context setting. That went fine. Almost all of the Chinese students I have ever taught have a shockingly complete food-related vocabulary, and this class was no different. After context-setting came my core dialogue. Most of the students had no trouble with it.
After we had done the CD with all of the variables, we still had about ten minutes left. They were too old for a game. The lesson was too simple to review. And so, I opened it up to questions. This was a wonderful idea (if I don't say so myself): the more advanced students, especially, had a lot of questions. They asked about etiquette. They asked about what Westerners ate at various meals, and what the English words were for certain foods. One woman kept asking me about wine. I declined to answer her, though – I just don't know enough about wine. I taught them about the various forks and spoons, plates and glasses that got laid out at a dinner, and even managed to get my “chew with your mouth closed” plug in. By the end, the lesson had shifted it's focus from being an English lesson to being an etiquette lesson, which was ideal—incidental learning is usually the best type. I had done a good job. After class, one of my students invited me out to dinner. Another told me that I was the best teacher he had had that morning. I felt great.
So that was my Monday lesson. I had brought a plate of Oreos with with which to model “passing” food at a table, and now, I sat at the back of the classroom, eating the cookies and drinking water (water/tea and Oreos is the new milk and cookies in China), and decompressing. I stuck around for the next three lessons to watch my classmates teach. The topic for the day was 'Food Culture,' so I watched Priya do a class on Indian food, Michael talk about various things you can put on “the barbie,” and Marie discuss the finer points of the Cornish pasty. “Pasty” is a wretched word, by the way.
As I mentioned before, there was a certain amount of required peer observation. This fact had been more or less sprung on us the previous Friday, which led to an hour of pandemonium as we all tried to figure out who would be observing who. For every class we taught, we needed two official peer observers, to whom we would hand our Official Peer Observation sheet. I spent a long time making complicated lists of who I would use to fill my required slots, and hunting down people to observe me, making sure not to have any one person observe me more than twice, and to not observe anyone twice myself. Then, half a dozen people had to switch their schedules around, to fill Endy's time slots, or to make sure that we taught at least one lesson in every school, or in my case, both. I had agreed to take on a double-lesson day on Tuesday, which gave me an extra free day later in the week. It was only after a frantic hour planning that I learned there had been a change in the rules – you had to stay in whatever classroom you were teaching in and watch the other people teaching there, regardless of whether you ended up never officially observing someone, or whether you observed someone three or four times. As a result, I got to see a lot of Marie and Diana's teaching, and almost none of some other people's (although I think I observed everyone in the end, either officially or unofficially). The schedule continued to change around throughout the next two weeks.
This schedule-rearranging was not helped by the high number of TEFL casualties. Before our class, I believe Shireen told us that the China branch had never lost or ejected more than one or two people in a term. On the first day of class, I listed the names and nationalities of all of my classmates on the first page of my notebook book – there were 18 of us. One person who was registered for the course never showed up, so there should have been 19. First Sterling left – he was doing a 2-week PELT course, which was just the TEFL course without teaching practice. He returned to the school he had been working at in Korea, I believe. Then James left for the States unexpectedly – marriage problems. Actually, I was under the impression he was divorced; he had certainly told us enough about his Chinese girlfriends. Frankly, I think that he just realized that he was not well-liked among the TEFL trainees, and that perhaps teaching was not for him – “marriage problems” may have been an attempt to claim the course refund. (He was denied it anyway). Larry suddenly started having vision problems one weekend, and had to be hospitalized in Hong Kong – he was refunded, and I believe he is re-taking the course this month. Greg got a call saying his father was about to die, followed up by his son being in a car accident. He planned to go back home to take care of things, but his father recovered, and his son was okay. He had missed a bunch of teaching practice, though, so he stuck around in Zhuhai to take the course again in October or November.
Then there was Endy, a short, nearly-inaudible man from Nigeria. He had gotten a 90-day business visa for this course, but had arrived in Zhuhai at the beginning of the summer – thus, his visa was set to expire midway through the course. This did not make sense to any of us – how could you ever make that miscalculation? The TEFL course, ostensibly, is the main reason for coming to Zhuhai. But this, we learned, was typical of his behavior – almost childishly un-thoughtful, as if he expected things to just happen without him doing anything. He was always asking for other trainees' help on assignments, always asking for explanations (i.e. of phonetics). People invariably told him to go right to the source, and ask one of the teachers. But he never did. Another time, a representative of a school in Zhuhai came by to talk about his school and collect CV's. At the end of his spiel, he had a Q&A; a few people asked questions. Then, he left. No sooner had he set foot out the door did Endy walk up to one of the TEFL teachers and begin asking questions that the representative would have been better suited to answer.
Anyway, as he had known it would for the past three months, Endy's visa expired, right smack in the middle of the course, and thus, at the beginning of Teaching Practice. He disappeared off the face of the earth for almost a week – no contact whatsoever; I don't think the teachers even knew what was going on. I remember, he asked Jenny to tape one of our classes for him, but that was it. Apparently he was in Guangzhou, trying to straighten his visa out. The rest of us were left teaching double-shifts to fill ups his time slots.
He came back at the end of the first week of TP, I believe. We were sitting at lunch, and he walked by and said hello nervously. For the rest of the day, we saw him talking to people – Shireen, Jenny. Apparently, he hauled a few people off to the side individually and asked if he could take their classes for them. But by the end of the day, it was clear – he was a-goner.
So, from an original pool of 19, we were left with 13 students at the end. I felt like I was on “Survivor: TEFL.” The remaining group was extremely tight-knit, though. Priya was married and lived in Hong Kong, so she kind of did her own thing. Alma worked at the GLV regularly, and was just taking this course for some new Chinese law requirement, so she continued with her normal life. Sumit lived in a hotel a bit of a ways from the GLV – he was an engineer. Actually, many of the foreigners I met in Zhuhai were engineers of some sort, there was so much construction going on there. Sumit's story is very interesting, actually. He didn't really like engineering that much. He wanted to be a teacher, full-time. And he was a fantastic teacher. He has such a loud, full, voice, and he was so funny and exuberant. He was used to teaching training sessions for his company in front of 400 people, so he had to be like that, large and animated. And he was so nice after class. He would talk with absolute passion on any number of subjects, and whenever you were talking, he adopted an expression of absolute wonderment; always, he did whatever he was doing with an almost un-containable energy. If there were one reason I wish I smoked, it would be because of Sumit – Jett got to be very close friends with him and Ambuj on their rooftop smoke-breaks. Anyway, Sumit happened to be in Zhuhai on business, and he had a month off while some parts he needed got shipped in. So without missing a beat, he found this TEFL course online, and signed up.
Day two of Teaching Practice was The Big Day, with two classes. It would be my first class outside of the GLV. First, I would be teaching a class of forty or so 8- to 10-year-olds – another core dialogue. If I was nervous about my first lesson, I was terrified about this one. (Writing this, I can't even imagine being nervous – isn't that funny?) Then, in the afternoon, I would be teaching some GLV level 2 students. I wasn't worried about that at all – I had watched Mei Ling teach two GLV 2 classes as part of our observation unit, and they seemed like good, smart, inquisitive students.
As it turned out, things did not go as expected. I woke up early that morning. Finding the GLV locked (too early), and no restaurants or shops open, I was forced to eat at KFC. In American dollars, KFC costs the same in China and in the US, so it is actually very upscale dining in China. You would take your girlfriend to KFC on your first date, for example. That morning, I walked in the door, and was greeted by the traditional “good morning!” and the Nazi salute. They say “good morning!” allllllll day long. This is not just a KFC thing – in every Western establishment, at all times of the day, it's always “good morning!”— when you enter, and when you leave. I went to the counter, and over-paid for a scrawny, soggy, gamy chicken-and-egg breakfast sandwich. The food costs the same in China, but you get less of it. I was sitting there, the only person in the restaurant, when Jett walked in. It was his day off, but he had woken up to see me teach, since the crazy observation schedule otherwise precluded that possibility. I was not expecting to see him. He got some coffee and sat down. Mandi came in, too, and got some breakfast, but declined to sit with us. She became more and more distant from everyone for the remainder of the course, finally leaving on the last day without saying a single goodbye.
We were supposed to meet in front of KFC at 7:40 to walk to No. 5 Primary School. Some combination of nervousness and that terrible KFC roll-up was making me feel extremely ill. I was the first one teaching again, and I just hoped I felt better by the time I stood up at the head of the class. It was a short walk, perhaps ten minutes, and it took us down a road I had never been down, despite its close proximity to the GLV. I was excited by the prospect of finding new restaurants here. (Indeed, the dinner club staked out a beef noodle place within the next few days, which I thought was one of the most filling, satisfying meals I'd had in Zhuhai, but which left Jett hungry. A few days later, we ate at a low-scale Korean restaurant near the GLV, which Jett thought was great, but which left me wanting another meal. That probably just goes to show you something, but I have no idea what that 'something' might be).
And so we arrived, and I saw my first Chinese public school. In Zhuhai, and I would imagine, in most of the schools down south, the schools have extremely open architecture. The halls are open-air; the staircases are open-air. The two side walls of all of the classrooms are made of windows, so you can see into the classrooms from the hall, and straight through to the other side. There is usually a courtyard, too, and a parade ground.
That morning, what I saw on the school's parade ground (and what I was to see on dozens of parade grounds at dozens of Chinese schools after that) took my breath away. When we walked into the school, past the ubiquitous 'slinky-gate' (I'll try to get a picture of one) and security checkpoint, it was deserted. We were too early. So Jenny led us through the school, out back, to the parade ground. There, the entire school – at least a thousand kids – was lined up in military formation, doing morning exercises. They were all in the school uniform. They could see us standing there, watching them. I had a 'dictator moment'; I could have been Mao, reviewing the troops. Over the loudspeaker came what I call the March — a triumphant song, (not dissimilar from the Monty Python theme song [which is actually a real song called The Liberty Bell march, by John Philip Sousa]; originally, I suspected it was the Chinese national anthem, but it wasn't), played by a full marching band. And afterwards, the Exercise Song, with a variety of music setting the backdrop for a man chanting: “Yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba! Er, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba! San, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba!” and so on. These are the Chinese numbers one through eight. Translated: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8! 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8! 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8!” over and over again. These songs, to the best of my understanding, are played at every school across China during exercises. I've recorded them since then; if you have any interest in hearing them, email me, and I'll send you the mp3s. They will never leave my head, I've heard them so many times in just two months. If you're a foreign teacher in China, try as hard as you like to not learn any Chinese, you WILL learn the numbers one through eight.
I was feeling slightly less ill after the walk. The group broke in half—one half was going to be videotaped in the school's Dance Room; and a few others were going to teach in a classroom. Students were flooding into the building. I saw almost no teachers. This has also remained true for almost every school I've been to. There are no lines, no teachers monitoring the hallways – the students are responsible for getting themselves around, not killing each other, etc. (In fact, students break into random, playful wrestling matches on a regular basis). I felt like I was in Never-Never land, there were so few adults around. My classroom was a cramped, dark affair – the only light was what was coming through the shaded windows, and the desks were all very close together. There was a platform for the teacher to stand on at the head of the room, and a big blackboard with a little Chinese flag hanging above it. Apart from that, the room was bare.
The lesson went well enough, I thought. Apparently, some of my drawings were hard to see/understand, and I deviated a bit from the Core dialogue paradigm. That, in and of itself, wouldn't have been a problem were Jenny not my observer. I tried explaining that I didn't think they were ready for S/S without it written on the board first, but she would have none of it. She is so by-the-book, it almost blows my mind. I also learned that day not to judge the quality of your lesson on the facial expressions of your peer observers. People (myself included) tend to adopt a facial expression somewhere between “practically comatose with boredom” and “I'm so angry I could kill someone right now” while observing classes, but it doesn't actually mean anything. It's best to just ignore your observers, anyway.
After my class, I let down a bit. I still had another class that afternoon, but I assumed it would be a piece of cake after the morning. I watched Mandi give a class. I watched Diana (actually, I fell asleep in her class, which I felt terrible about. I was tired straight through to the bone, though. After class, she was like, “I looked to the back of the room, and I noticed you were either praying, or sleeping. . .”). She's an exceedingly motherly and gentle teacher though—very slow and patient. Sumit stepped in to cover one of Endy's classes – his class was wonderful, as usual, although as testament to how tired I was, I found myself nodding off in that one, too. Again, never look at your peer observers for a gage of how well you're doing.
After the first batch of classes, we walked back to the GLV. I spent the afternoon just tooling around inside, killing time until my class at 2:45. At 1:30, I went to observe Marie – she was teaching the same class I was about to teach. We were both to teach on the topic 'Sports & Hobbies' – she was to do a core dialogue, and I was to do a communicative activity. I had a great lesson planned. She inadvertently undid part of my lesson, by treating 'sports' and 'hobbies' as synonyms; I was going to make a distinction. Still, I was able to make corrections to all my worksheets by the end of her class. Watching her, I thought I had acquired a pretty good read on the students. Marie's lesson seemed a bit to easy for them, so I thought I'd go just a little bit harder.
After Marie's lesson, there was a 15-minute break. I didn't want to be in the classroom—the awkward thing again. I've since become very good at standing at the head of the classroom, waiting for the bell to ring, but at the time, I just wanted to get out of there. I filled my water bottle. I checked my email for the millionth time. Finally, I walked back in.
I was greeted by the usual chorus of “Harry Potter! Harry Potter!”.
“Yes,” I said, “I know I look like Harry Potter. But the only magic I know is the magic of the English language.”
That drew a roomful of silence and blank stares. Okay, perhaps that was a bit too advanced. Not to mention awful.
That was the second-worst class I've ever had, I think. Thankfully, at least this time, it wasn't my fault. It was the students. First of all, many of them were young, and realized I was very young. Second: the GLV is extraordinarily expensive, and so most of the students there are very dedicated students of English. But because these kids were so young—most of them 19-22—many of them were being financed by their parents. It wasn't their own money they were wasting. Then, there was the environment—it was a long table, and a small classroom, so I couldn't move around and police easily. A certain boy, whose name I will change to Barracuda, was the biggest troublemaker of them all – he was sitting in the back talking the entire time. The entire rear quarter of the table was either distracted by him, or couldn't hear me because he was talking. (I forgive him, though – a few days later, Jett and I went out for huo.guo with a bunch of GLV students, and he picked up the tab at the end of the meal and refused payment). It was a miserable class, just barely under control, and certainly not the piece of cake I'd expected it to be. Shireen was my observer that day, and she was very sympathetic, and gave me a good evaluation.
Wednesday was my first day off. I woke up at at 8:45 or so, and arived at the GLV just in time to catch the first class of the day—Marie teaching the Zhuhai Press again. Today, the theme was 'Festivals and Holidays'. Marie taught about Guy Fawkes Day in Britain, and went through the “Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November” poem. Ambuj taught briefly about India's 'Festival of Colors', then switched to Christmas, I believe. I have no idea why. There were one or two more classes, but I don't remember them. That afternoon, I have no recollection of what happened. Nothing too exciting, evidently. I prepared for my lesson the next day, which was at Nanping Middle School
I was dreading Nanping Middle School. The people who came back from it on Wednesday afternoon had all sort of horror stories. It was a vocational school, meaning the kids who went there were ostensibly too dumb or unmotivated for regular middle school. They were surly, sulky, hormone-filled teenagers, 13-17 years old – old enough to know that they didn't have to learn if they didn't want to, and smart enough to know that there would be no punishment for sleeping through the foreign teacher's class. We were told to expect levels of English comparable to the 8-year-olds at No. 5 Middle School. (Please, don't ask me why Nanping and No. 5 are both considered “Middle School” when there is such a huge age discrepancy—I just don't know). And of course, I had not one, but two classes to teach there over the next two days.
So at 7:25, we all met at KFC. The school dispatched a van to come collect us. As we walked through the open halls, I continued to get the choruses of “Harry Potter! Harry Potter!” I don't remember the exact schedule, but I think we arrived just as the students were taking a break. On came the music again—“Yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba!” I actually got video of it this time with my camera. I'll try to find a way to post that online. Otherwise, if you want to see it, just email me, and I'll send it over. Rows and rows of kids were jumping rope, as we waited on a a balcony overlooking them. It was yet another 'dictator moment'.
I had the third class that day. I believe Robyn had the first class. Her students were, as reported, completely disinterested. There was a kid sitting right in front of me with an earbud, the wire snaking down his neck, out of Robyn's sight. He and the four people around him were just talking for the entire lesson. It was driving me crazy, but I made the judgment call not to interfere with Robyn's lesson at all. After her class, I was accosted by half a dozen students for autographs and photos, something I would soon become accustomed to.
The next lesson was Alma's. This was the first lesson of hers that I had seen, and it was amazing. When she had taught the TEFL trainees in class, I didn't really think anything of her style. But now, she established such instant, easy rapport with the students, it made me almost jealous. Her lesson was so good, it didn't even feel like a lesson. There was no stop-and-go, no distinct lines between planned activities—everything just melted seamlessly into everything else. She was helped by the fact that her class was very small (only perhaps 15 kids), and all girls (those boys, always causing trouble). They had incredible names, those students of hers—Manly, Moon, Kitty, etc. That Alma was such a good teacher surprised me – I admit, I thought she was a bit of a know-it-all in class, but hey! As it turned out, she really did know it all!
At that point, I had pretty much decided that the best teachers were Sumit, Jett, and Alma. As soon as I figured that out, I began watching every one of their classes that I could. They all had very different styles, and thus different methods of classroom control. Sumit was so intense, so loud, so massive and energetic that you could not help but pay attention. Disrupting his class would be like standing in front of a freight train. Alma was so sweet, so gentle, so friendly, that you wanted nothing more than to return the favor, and make her happy. Jett is not as boisterous or charismatic as Sumit, but he is very patient, and very good at the actual act of teaching. He is friendly with the students, but has firm ground rules, and he enforces those rules swiftly and without exception.
My class that day was awful, and this time it was largely my fault. I couldn't go through the class in my head the night before. The students were, once again, very close to me in age—by some cruel twist of fate, I had the oldest class that day. And like Robyn's class, they wanted to be anywhere but in the classroom with me. It wasn't even a real classroom—it was an auditorium, with chairs instead of desks. The whiteboard was a spindly piece of crap; you had to grip the top of the board whenever you erased to keep from knocking it over. The front of the room was covered with, and the whiteboard was surrounded by, giant potted plants. The whiteboard also did not erase well—you basically couldn't erase during class without making a gigantic fool out of yourself and wasting time. The icing on the cake was that I was being taped that day and the next day, so after I spent forty-five minutes embarrassing myself, I got to go back, fiddle with the video playback equipment for half an hour (the camera power cut out if you looked at it funny, so rewinding was always a task), then watch myself for another forty-five minutes.
I don't even remember what happened, really; I just remember finishing the lesson, waving goodbye to my students, and sitting down on the floor at the head of the class. I was not happy. Alma had stuck around for my lesson, as had Robyn, and now Robyn helped me clean the blackboard. Neither of us was particularly pleased with our class that day, so it felt good to commiserate.
The next day was a similar drill—same school, same classroom, still being videotaped. Again, I was the last person to go. Michael managed to put a plug in for his old company's product: there is a way of preparing barbecue chicken which essentially involves sticking a can of beer up the chicken's butt, and grilling it, letting the beer evaporate into the chicken. The problem is, the chicken doesn't balance very well on just a beer can. His old company made a device—essentially a cinder block—which helped balance the beer-can-stuffed chicken. I actually have a picture of it—if you look carefully at the picture of Michael, Jenny, and I, you can see it hanging on the blackboard. After Michael came poor Marie, who had been misinformed about the skill level of her students, and thus ran out of material at the end of her lesson. Quickly, she got a tic-tac-toe game going—it's a wonderful filler for the end of a class, and a good ESL review game to boot.
Finally, it was my turn. It had somehow worked out that there was an hour-and-fifteen-minute lunch break between Marie's and my class, so I had plenty of time to think things over. Jenny (nor anybody else) had any idea where we could get food. The school had a snack shop, but it was all junk food in plastic bags. Eventually, some people went on an expedition to find some lunch. I decided to stay at the school, but midway through the break, Jenny brought us a bag of bao.zi, a dumpling-like roll stuffed with pork or bean paste. Also during the break, while I was scrubbing at the whiteboard, trying to get it clean, I noticed a tear in the surface. It looked like the whole surface of the whiteboard was covered in a thin layer of plastic. I ran to get the custodian. We made the tear a little bigger, then wrote on the surface underneath. It seemed fine, and it erased easily. So we tore away the rest of the plastic. Evidently, nobody had taken the protective plastic coating off of the whiteboard after it had been bought. I had a brand new board to work on, and I could erase! Perhaps I find this a little more exciting than any of you will.
So, with a new board, the potted plants moved out of the way, and a non-core dialogue lesson plan, I began my class. It went much better—still not my best class, but definitely decent. We were supposed to do a reading activity, but it turned out that none of the kids could really read. As I said, I always prepared three lessons after the first day, so I made some on-the-fly adjustments and carried on. Half of being a foreign language teacher (and perhaps any teacher) is improvisation—being able to pull things out of your butt if you run out of material, adapting existing materials to meet unforeseen needs, etc. I had learned a lot of this from Jett. During our one-on-one teaching practice the week before, it became clear that our three students didn't know the alphabet. Jett turned to me, and was like, “They don't know the alphabet. We've got to work on the alphabet.” And so we stopped the lesson right then and there, and we began to write and drill the alphabet.
And so concluded our first week of teaching practice. And so also began our last weekend together. There are a whole number of dinners and events which are a completely hopeless jumble in my head. I will do my best to recount them chronologically, but no promises. We had a lot planned—we wanted to have another Indian dinner. Jing Yi had been on vacation all that week, so we hadn't been to the street bar; that night (Friday) would be one of our last chances to see her. Sumit was telling us about the Zhuhai Hot Springs—for 60 kuai, you got a locker for your clothes and some swim trunks, 24 hours of swimming in the multitudinous baths (swimming pool, hot tub, cold tub, tea tub, rose-scened tub, etc.), movies at the in-house theater, a meal or two, and a night's stay. We wanted to give that a try. I hadn't seen the Zhuhai fisher lady, nor the nearby park.
Earlier that week, Jett and I had stayed late at the GLV, and we decided to go out to the Dumpling King for dinner. Who should we run into there but, like magic, most of the rest of our dinner club—Robyn, Michael, Nick, and Marie. Jett and I pulled up chairs and ordered a few dishes for ourselves. I was sitting down at one end with Jett and Nick, who spent most of the meal reminiscing about WWF, and talking about various fighting leagues. Nick actually used to fight in cage matches for a few extra bucks, so he was really into the whole fighting thing. All of his tee shirts had the logos of various fighting leagues. That evening, we were walking away from the restaurant, when what should Nick spot but a poster for a kick-boxing fight happening that weekend. A quick poll showed that most of us would be interested in going to see it. So it was resolved. For some reason, it came to be understood that the fight was on Friday.
So Friday, after we got back from Nanping Middle School, we tried to get some tickets. Jett and I had been hanging out with Tim (my roommate) a lot lately. We ran into him in the GLV, and asked him to come with us to get the tickets. He happily obliged. The tickets were being sold out of a glasses shop, of all places. Jett and I stood around and tried to look imposing while Tim bargained with the salespeople. The final deal was this—if we could round up eight people to come, the store would sell the tickets to us for 70 per ticket, a 30-kuai drop from the asking price. On our way out of the store, we looked at the sign again—the fight was for Saturday night. We hoped nobody would have other plans.
Jett, Tim, and I then all trooped over to the DVD shop nearby. The store owner had sold Jett a copy of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 without English subtitles. This we only found out as Jett and I had settled down to watch it earlier that week. As soon as we walked into the store and held up the disk, the shopkeeper seemed to know what was going on, and refunded Jett.
Tim had to run off to class. Jett and I spent the rest of the afternoon doing who-knows-what. We probably worked some CS in there, though. At 7:00, everyone rendezvoused at the Culture Plaza. Jett had invited Emily, a girl from Singapore whom he had met at the bar the previous weekend. First, we had to break the bad news—no fight until tomorrow. Everyone was fine with it. Everyone, that is, except Tim. To the best of my understanding (for it was not very well explained to me), Tim had gotten a sudden call from his employer in Shenzhen, and was leaving the next morning. Still, we had eight takers, so we set to meet at the same time and same place the next night.
In the meantime, we needed something to do that night. Jett and I brought up the idea of going out for Korean barbecue. This would be ideal for me—I owed Jett a dinner. A Korean barbecue, to be exact. It seemed like so much longer than a scant three weeks ago that Jett and I had found A Li Lang, and he had paid for my meal, explaining that things were done in rounds here in Asia. Moreover, I owed Tim a big meal, for taking me out to the seafood restaurant and karaoke. So it was decided – A Li Lang or bust.
We quickly ran into trouble. By some act of incredible stupidity, the Zhuhai taxi drivers all changed shifts right in the middle of rush hour. We were twenty minutes away from the end of the shift, but every taxi we stopped simply refused to take passengers. After about ten minutes and as many taxis, we realized that we would either have to wait for a while, or find alternative transportation.
It ended up being the latter. On our seafood night, we had hired a van to take us back to the GLV. It had pulled up to the bus stop, so I assumed that there were a number of these vans, just sort of acting like large taxis. I suggested to Tim that we just find one of those. One of the smaller streets behind the GLV was complete gridlock, and Tim managed to accost a man driving a white van. It was one of the more amazing transactions I have ever witnessed—within a minute of rapid-fire talking and bargaining, just standing in the middle of traffic, Tim had scored us a ride to A-Li-Lang, for only 30 kuai. I believe we were ten people, traveling half way across the city, in rush hour, for 30 kuai. It was a dream come true. We all scurried into the van, just as traffic began to move.
It was a fun ride. There was the incredulous conversation—did we really just hop into a complete stranger's unmarked white van in the middle of China? It was also then that I learned that we weren't in an actual taxi, and that the driver's job description wasn't actually “taxi driver”; Tim explained that unlicensed taxiing was very illegal, and that the driver had taken us on at great personal risk. For just thirty kuai. I still couldn't get over that. I chatted with Robyn and Jett most of the way there. I knew where we were going pretty much the entire way there, so well had I gotten to know that part of Gongbei. As we hopped out, the driver gave Tim his cell phone number, and told us to call him if we ever needed to get back. And that was that. We trooped into A Li Lang.
The restaurant had private rooms for large parties, and we were shown into one such room. Dinner was ordered in a mixture of Korean and Chinese. Jett was back in his element—he knew all of the food, and he hooked us up with all the good stuff. We also got a few bottles of soju for the table. As before, dozens of small side dishes were brought out. Then waitresses came out, primed the stoves, and put the pork on for us. And we ate. It was a fun meal. There table was actually much too big for ten people, and there was a split between us for the two stoves. Somehow, the Americans—myself, Nick, Mandi, and Robyn—had all ended up sitting at one end, and all of the others—Jett, Tim, Emily, and Marie at the other. Humorously, Team America had licked their plates clean before the other group had even gotten half way through. When the others were finished, Team America liberated their leftovers.
The meal only came out to be 60 kuai per person—still expensive, but not as expensive as my meal with Jett. As I expected, Tim tried to pay for his own meal. But much to my surprise, he absolutely insisted on paying when I forced the issue. I felt almost slighted, that he would not let me repay him for his kindness. I pushed it as far as I was comfortable pushing it, but when he still refused to let me pay, I dropped it.
It was a beautiful night, so we decided to walk to Bar Street. For twenty minutes, we walked along the meandering road, enjoying the breeze coming off the ocean only a few hundred yards away. The sidewalk was only big enough for people to walk two abreast, and I paired up with Robyn. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember how content I was on that walk. Soon, we came across the neon sidewalks of Bar Street, and settled once again on the Cabana. I don't even remember how long we stayed for. I taught Robyn how to play the dice game, and she was quickly kicking my butt. We had ordered a bucket of Heineken for the table. It tasted god-awful, and I didn't have another sip of beer for a week, until we arrived in Shenzhen and it would have been rude not to. But we'll get there when we get there.
I was tired. After we finished at the Cabana, we all headed over to Walking Bar Street. I sat for maybe half an hour, but I really just wanted to go home and get some sleep, which is what I did. A few people came with me—I don't remember exactly who. The rest of the group went clubbing, including Tim.
I woke up at noon the next day with a note on my door from Tim. I had told him to wake me up before I left, but in his note, he said he didn't want to. He also invited me, again, to stay with him if I was ever in Shenzhen. Now, I don't actually know what the social rules are concerning inviting someone to sleep at your house in America. But Tim had invited me to stay verbally before, and had just written it in his note. I was inclined to take him seriously.
Normally, I would have spent such a lazy Saturday in bed, writing in my blog. Obviously, that did not happen on this particular Saturday, or I would have posted sooner. Instead, I went out to eat. I think I went to McMinarettes for one final time. I met Nick there, and we talked a bit about his experiences with/knowledge about college, learning, careers, the military, politics, etc. I mentioned that I might want to go into business, and he took a very genuine interest in helping me out. Nick, if you're reading this, thanks again. Anyway, when I got the bill, there was an unexpected 3-kuai add-on. This was maybe the third or fourth time this had happened to me there—I ordered one dish on the menu, and as I was about to pay, they either crossed out the price and wrote a new one on the menu, or charged me for something they couldn't explain. Who knows, maybe it was just my bad luck. Jett loved the place. But as I've come to learn about myself over the course of this trip, there is really only one thing in this world that makes me angry, and that is feeling like I've been ripped off. I'll return to this idea later, once I've told you a bit more. Anyway, I resolved not to eat at that particular restaurant ever again.
After that, I have no idea what happened. But somehow, it ended up being Saturday night. At 6:50, I arrived at the Culture Plaza. A few people were there already. There was a big, complicated thing with the tickets which I don't even want to go into, it was so damned frustrating. It was one of these headless chicken situations, where nobody knew where who's ticket was, and who had paid for whom, and nobody could give me a straight answer about how many tickets we actually had. At first, I went into the glasses shop and picked up my ticket for 70 kuai. The lady there tried telling me something in Chinese about the other two tickets—I assumed she wanted me to buy up her remaining two tickets, and I tried to assure her that my friends were coming over in a few minutes to pick them up. When I got back to the Culture Plaza, Jett told me that we already had all the tickets, and that I had just wasted my money on an extra. Then the lady at the glasses shop called Jett on his cell phone, which she had apparently been doing all day, and Jett handed me the phone. I had no idea what she was trying to say, but she was nearly hysterical. Didn't she know not to make things complicated with a bunch of people who couldn't speak Chinese? I mean, what was she trying to accomplish? I was very stressed at this point. I still had that “stupid! stupid! stupid!” knot in my stomach, thinking I had bought an extra ticket. Anyway, in the end, we didn't have enough tickets, and some people went over to the shop to pick up the remaining two, and everything was fine.
It was late enough by that point that it was easy to find a cab. I'm sitting here in Changchun, at 5:00 PM, and it's completely dark outside; in Zhuhai, the sun was just setting over the horizon. The cab ride was barely ten minutes, and cost the bare minimum12 kuai. The fight was being held at Zhuhai's Olympic complex, as we learned when we stepped out of the cab and saw the many new buildings and giant Olympic rings hanging beneath an arch.
We—Jett, Marie, Mandi, and I— took some pictures of each other beneath the gorgeous sunset and in front of these futuristic, domed buildings while we waited for the cab containing Michael, Nick, and Robyn to arrive. Ten minutes later, there was still no sign of them. I borrowed Jett's cell phone and called Michael. They had been dropped off at another entrance, and they were waiting for us at the correct building. We were to look for some Olympic rings and a giant bowling pin as landmarks. The bowling pin was easy to find, and thus, so were our compatriots. We walked up the stairs and into the arena.
The arena building was large and domed and circular. Inside, there was stadium seating, with a large, deep circular area cut into the middle. In the very center of that room was the boxing ring. Arranged all around it were seats (for VIPs, I would imagine), and a table for the judges. Huge pennants dangled from the ceiling. According to our tickets, our seats were pretty far from the action, but we took a chance and sat in the first non-VIP row. Nobody bothered us, not even an entire precinct of green-uniformed policemen who walked, in unison, around the room, and into their seats in a back corner. I think they were just there to watch the fight, not actually enforce the law—kind of a 'company outing'.
The fight, it seemed, started at 9:00, and the doors just opened at 8:00 (which was the time printed on the ticket). So we sat and talked for an hour. Slowly, the room filled. By 9:00, there wasn't a seat left in the house.
First came some pre-show entertainment. The lights in the stadium dropped. A white-suited man, and his identically-clad and -groomed son got up and sang, terribly. Then, there was some Queen—'We Will Rock You'. Then, there was some more singing. Overall, there was a lot more singing that night than I'd bargained for. Finally, the first two fighters, who had been warming up on the darkened fringes of the inner circle, came into the ring and shed their robes.
The announcer said some things. The ref said a few things to the boxers. Then, they fought. This was real kick boxing. Michael had seen a kick boxing tournament in Thailand, I believe, but it had been all rigged like the WWF. I had come prepared for either—the real thing, or the wholesale entertainment. There was a lot of kicking, which was to be expected, but also a surprising amount of throwing. They fought each other for two rounds, which I inferred were timed, since there was no other discernible reason for them to have stopped. Between rounds, a girl in leather pants and a fishnet shirt stepped into the ring and strutted around it once, holding a sign with the round number above her head. There were actually two identically-clad girls who alternated. Jett speculates that they just picked them up off the street, since they didn't seem very sure of themselves at first. Much to my surprise, their signs had “Round 1” or “Round 2” written in English on the back; as far as I could tell, we were the only foreigners in the room. I felt bad for the girls, though—they had to bend over to get between the ropes of the ring, something I would never want to do in such very tight leather pants.
After the second round, quite unexpectedly, the ref summoned both boxers to the center, grabbed their hands, and raised one man's hand high in the air. There had been a winner. Where had that come from? Was that really it? They hadn't been up there for very long. Nick suspected that one person just had to win two rounds out of three to take the fight, and that the winner of a round was determined by a panel of judges. Then there was a big hullabaloo, with the guy posing for pictures, receiving a big ol' trophy and some flowers, and so on. The most surprising thing was this—nobody in the auditorium was getting into it. There was no cheering, no applause, no standing up—everyone just sat there, in darkness and silence. I was expecting something much rowdier—a small, crowed room, probably without seating; lots of sweating men, jumping up and crying out and gambling.
The silence of the crowds only added to a growing feeling of pity I had for the fighters. Nick explained the situation to me—none of these men were educated. The winner's purse was usually just enough to get them by. And sooner or later—but usually sooner—they hurt themselves—or more likely, got hurt—and were left with nothing to fall back on. They had to train constantly. At least it wasn't like in Thailand, where sometimes, the winner's purse was in a commodity, like gasoline, which the winner then had to go re-sell. The poorer you were, the more often you had to fight, and thus, the more likely you were to get injured.
As the fight went on, the men got bigger and bigger. There was only one KO, and it was a pretty big deal. Being kicked unconscious is not high on my list of things to do in this life. The idea of someone's toenails against my cheek just does not appeal to me.
There was a bit of an intermission. Unlike at American sporting events, there was not a bite to eat or a drop to drink anywhere around. Nobody was selling hot dogs or throwing boxes of peanuts. I was parched; by some luck, Jett and I found a few guys giving out free water as a promotion by one of the doors, for a glance at your ticket. We went back to our seats. After we told the rest of the group where to get water, Michael somehow scored two bottles for himself, by getting the first, putting it down around the corner, then going back for another—you'd think they would have recognized a six-foot-five white guy coming back for seconds, but hey. A few more people got up and talked or sang. We had no idea who any of them were supposed to be. The announcer was speaking an awful lot. It was cool, to be at a kick-boxing match in China, but I wouldn't leap up to do it again.
After the heaviest-weights, a few of the losers fought re-matches. We ducked out before the last fight, to see if we could beat the rush out of there and get a taxi.
A few people—Nick, I think, and Marie, and Michael—decided to detach and go home. The rest of us wanted to get some food. We had almost no idea where we were in the city of Zhuhai, but we figured Gongbei would be as good a place as any to grab a bite. Somehow, there were no taxis around. In fact, there were no cars around whatsoever. We waited at the corner of a giant intersection for perhaps ten minutes. Then Jett sprang into action. He led us for about fifteen minutes down the road to another, more heavily trafficked street, where we caught a cab to Gongbei.
We got out, found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and sat down outside at a sidewalk table. In America, you avoid little hole-in-the-wall restaurants like they're the plague, right? Well, that's where you get a good meal in China. If the tables are dirty, all the better—someone was probably chowing down with so much zeal that he spilled the soy sauce. I knew that this restaurant was gonna be good, because it was one of the filthiest bathrooms I had seen yet. If it's a nice restaurant by Western standards, they will overcharge you, and the food will be the same as, if not worse than, the stuff you get at the other restaurants. God help you if they go so far as to have decor.
It was a nice little dinner. We blundered our way through the menu in Chinese:
“Do you have any beef soup?”
“Yes, spicy or not spicy?”
“Spicy. Do you have any vegetables?”
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Your decision. . .”
And so on. We ended up with a lovely repast, on a lovely evening, on a neon-lit street after a kick boxing match in China.
After dinner, we walked to the street bar. I can't remember if Mandi came with us. I figured I could just chat with Robyn; Jett would be talking to Jing Yi, making the most of his last weekend with her.
One night, we were sitting at the street bar. By this point, the bar had all but completely lost its allure for me. I could no longer stand the taste of beer. I couldn't even finish a single glass at a meal. Robyn had observed that Tsingtao, to her, tasted like cheeseburger. Once she said it, I could taste it, too. And I had always felt that it had an acidic aftertaste, like vomit. Once I had put those two images together, I could no longer take a sip without feeling like I had just vomited up a cheeseburger. Meanwhile, Jett held that it was one of the best beers out there, and I had to agree, it beats the pants off of almost everything else I've tried. Meanwhile, the flower-selling boys were becoming more and more persistent, getting up close to my face with so I could feel their breath, and grabbing my shoulders. I hated that. The music repertoire was becoming quite tired. And on this particular night, this British boor was sitting across the bar from us. He was just plowing through the beer, speaking heavily accented – and increasingly slurred – intro-level Chinese. He was yelling at the bar girls. One of the flower boys was trying to sell him a flower, and he grabbed a handful and dashed them across the table. He never paid for them. Nobody – not me, not Jing Yi – was in the mood for speaking Chinese. I just sat there. Had we not already been in the neighborhood, this would not have been worth the 15-kuai taxi ride; possibly not even worth the 2-kuai bus ride. Once again, I just sat there talkin' until it was time to go home.
So that was Saturday. Sunday, it was decided, was time for one last meal at the Indian restaurant. I think it was Sunday, anyway. I'm going to say it was, since I have not the slightest recollection of what else happened on Sunday. This restaurant is an exception to my previous admonition about nice, clean restaurants, since it was operated by actual Indian people. We had learned our lesson about trying to get taxis at certain times of the day, and we headed out very early in the evening. Sadly, Sumit was unable to join us this time. I had the best cab driver I think I've ever had—I don't know how, but I could just tell he was a good, friendly guy. He spoke nice and slowly for me, and answered all of my questions about the names of various streets. When we arrived, we were seated immediately. Robyn wanted some more saag panier [sic?], so we put in a request for that, and I wanted a mango lassi—aside from that, Ambuj did the ordering. It was a little more toned-down from the first meal we had there, but still very enjoyable (not to mention delicious). Every half hour, one of the waitresses stepped up on a little stage near the door and did a traditional Indian dance. They also brought us a complementary bottle of wine. After we had all been given a glass, they handed out a little survey, asking our opinion of the wine, what we would pay for it, what we thought it would go with, how it compared to our favorite wine, etc. Once again, I was almost completely at a loss—how was all this wine stuff coming up in China?
After dinner, once again, some people went straight back home, and some people hit Bar Street. I went to Bar Street, but only for a short time. I was tired, for some reason, and as I said, rather sick of the place.
Not long after I got home, I was lying in bed, when I heard a car crash: SCREEEEEEEEEEE—thump! I hit the lights in my room, and looked out the window. It was a surreal half-hour. I couldn't really see anything. There were no sirens, no noises except for the occasional other car coming up or down the road. And slowly, over a long time, all of these people just began to drift out into the street, where I imagine the accident had happened. It was almost too far away for me to see, but there was just one intersection with all of these people in it, standing eerily still in the yellow street-light.
Monday was another day off for me. I decided I'd join the first expedition to No. 11 Primary School, to knock out some more observation, and to scout things out for when I had to teach there the next day. We were supposed to meet at Min Run, a nearby supermarket. I got up early and bought a sack of freshly-baked muffin from a little stall down the street. It was actually pretty funny—I had no idea how much the muffins cost, but I eyeballed them, and estimated that 6 kuai ought to be enough for one man's breakfast. So I handed him six. The vendor proceeded to take out this enormous plastic bag, and fill it with perhaps 25 muffins, enough for two or three breakfasts. I couldn't help but smile as I walked back to Min Run, imagining what I must look like walking around with enough muffins to feed a small army.
No. 11 was within walking distance. Our group finished assembling a little bit late, so Jenny was walking on full afterburner. She is one hell of a walker, Jenny is. Some people dubbed it the “Jane Fonda power-walk”—strides long enough to make you worry about her tearing her clothing. We got there in under ten minutes. Like every other school, it had a slinky-gate, a security checkpoint, and open hallways. At this school, the uniforms of the students were canary yellow.
We arrived in the middle of some sort of morning exercise. These were the youngest students we would be teaching—second through sixth grades, I believe, or 7 to 12 years old. When we entered the school compound, the students were standing in lines all across the parade ground, listening to a man on a platform give a speech beneath a streeling Chinese flag [that's for you, Noah]. A little shudder ran down my spine.
I don't remember whose classes I observed that day. I could look it up. But I'm not going to. You see, I'm getting bored of writing about this. I promised myself, when I began this, that I would write only for myself, and not for those reading. [That's been less and less possible, because frankly, it helps me write if I know someone's actually going to be reading. Also, I have to carefully regulate what I say about people]. I promised that I wouldn't drop details or alter facts to make my story faster-paced or more easily digested. But I never expected to just get bored of writing about any one topic. Anyway, on that first day at No. 11, I watched some people teach, and that was that. I remember being shocked by the poor quality of some of lessons I watched that day. I remember snacking on my giant bag of muffins at the back of the classroom, being incredibly glad that I could just relax and observe, and not have to worry about teaching; I remember Sumit coming and getting some muffins from me for breakfast. I remember being astounded by the size of the televisions in the classrooms—they CRT monitors, perhaps 3 to 4 feet across. Where did the school get that kind of money? And what could they possibly be using such large TVs for?
The next day, Tuesday, I taught at No. 11. I think I was the last class that day. I also managed to write a bit for the blog, so I'll just insert that here:
“Today was pretty awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I'm up at 1:30 AM with a 7:30 wake-up call, starting my blog – that's how badly I don't want it to end. First of all, it was my last day of teaching practice. The class went great – I taught a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds a modified version of “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.” Jenny, who is a very stiff, by-the-book grader, gave me a 'Very Good +', just shy of 'Excellent.' Apparently, she wanted to give me an 'Excellent,' but the primary school teacher whose class I had taken over wanted me to teach them how to introduce themselves and their age in my unexpectedly shortened 35-minute class full of 25 rambunctious children. When I say Jenny is by the book, I mean she is by the book. I even had the age thing in my lesson plan; they just cut my class short by fifteen minutes for 'eye exercises.' Not that I'm bitter.
“So, anyway, I had a good performance review. I observed two more classes in the afternoon: Alma's and Jett's. Their topic was “problems.” I was falling asleep in Alma's class, because I was tired, and it was hot. I ended up keeping myself awake by translating one of her worksheets into Ebonics. Jett's class was great, as usual, and after class, he wrangled up a group of students to go have another huo.guo dinner. I had a nice chat with Shireen up in the roof garden about the differences between different age groups of students. Then I went home, dropped my bag, probably dozed off for a few minutes, then went to meet Jett and the other studs for dinner.
“We certainly got some different ingredients with native Chinese speakers ordering. Tonight, I had the pleasure of eating bull testicles (not as good as they might sound), eel, and a strange, layered kind of tofu. We taught each other little bits of our respective languages, and we all sweat and cried and hollered with bites of food from the spicy broth. It's amazing what people put up with in their cuisine. Here you are, eating boiling-temperature meat in a slice almost too big to fit in your mouth, soaked with one of the spiciest peppers known to mankind, and all you have to drink is boiling-hot tea, and sometimes a lukewarm carbonated beverage such as Coke. There's just no way to stop the pain of the spice. What's more, you're already pouring sweat from the heat and the spice. Too top it off, not just once, but twice throughout the meal they bring you a scalding hot towel, pretty much too hot to touch, and probably utilizing some resold NASA equipment to attain such high temperatures.
“After dinner, a few of us struck out to play CS. That rocked, too. The internet café hadn't been running its dedicated server of late, so we'd been having to venture online, which could be a real pain. But with six people, we could start our own game. We could physically see everyone we were playing with. I had nervous jitters worse than I had in months, I was so geared up. God, I'm a loser.
“After an hour and a half of that, Robyn and Marie dropped by and invited us to come over to Robyn's apartment for some beer (or BEE-ah, as Aussie Michael says it). This we did, and spend about four hours just sitting around on the couches, talking, swapping stories (most of which are not repeatable), and playing version of 'Never Have I Ever'. I really suck at that sort of event; I never remember jokes or stories, and I haven't done anything exciting or renegade. I guess that's why I'm here, right?”
Still more wine stuff came up on that night—Michael had picked up a bottle of 1998 Great Wall. We all sat around sipping it from these little plastic cups that were so flimsy, you couldn't pick them up without them deforming. The wine was just awful. So awful that Michael cut his with Sprite. I know enough to know that you just don't do that with wine—if it's so bad you have to mix it with soda, you simply don't drink it.
So, that was the end of my teaching practice. Now that I've been teaching for a few weeks, I can tell you that it it much easier to teach six classes in day than it is to teach six classes over the course of two weeks. Having such huge time lapses between classes, and having the pressure of having to do so well on each one, is really stressful. Of course, with TEFL, we taught a different class, age group, and skill level every day, at a different location; moreover, we had to prepare complete lesson plans and materials. Doing that for six classes in a day would be hell on earth. Here in Changchun, I usually do not have to make my own materials. Since I see the students on a regular basis, I do not need an encapsulated lesson plan, just a grammar focus and loose schedule of activities; then, we work at whatever pace the students require.
I wrote an additional 12 pages about Friday, my last full day in Zhuhai. I did not write them with the intention of anyone besides myself reading them, which was a surprisingly refreshing experience—surprising since I've been writing with pretty much complete candor the entire time. Nothing crucial to my story happens on that day, I don't believe; maybe, when I'm finished catching up the rest of this blog, I'll publish and edited version. For now, here are some tidbits which I couldn't find another place for:
All throughout the last week, the city was preparing for the National Day Golden Week. There are three Golden Weeks throughout the year in China, for the Spring Festival (Chinese Lunar New Year), Labor Day (starting May 1st), and National Day (starting October 1st). The Culture Plaza, as well as many other buildings, were all bedecked with red lanterns (see the pictures—the CP hung this really cool grid of lanterns across the colonnade). They also set up a stage, and had concerts of some form or another almost every night. Most of the performers were amateur pop singers, and were simply god-awful.
My TV was broken for most of the time I was there. Towards the end, someone came in and put in a new cable box, so we could get CCTV9, the international (read: English) TV channel. One day, I flipped it on, just for the heck of it. It was a program about Mao Zedong—that day was the 30th anniversary of his death. Nobody had mentioned anything about it to me; from what I can tell, he's really not such a big deal anymore.
Speaking of things that don't work properly, the LCD numbers on the elevators in our building were truly funny. Every morning, I would watch the elevator come down to my floor: 20, 19, 18, 19—then the doors opened. Perhaps every fourth number would be a misprint (or a 'mis-light', if we're getting technical). Jett lived on the 13th floor, and his was even worse. Being able to read his numbers would be like learning a numeral system in another language: 14, 9, E, 22, -|, 0, 3—and so on.
When Jett and I didn't want to be understood by Chinese people who spoke/might have spoken English, we would speak in Ebonics, with a very heavy accent. It was a running debate, whether Ebonics or Pig Latin would be more effective—I was much better at PL, but Jett was much better at Ebonics.
I planned most of my post-TEFL travel within the last week in Zhuhai. The first consideration was whether I wanted to try to get my working visa before I left Zhuhai or not. If I did, I would have to go to Hong Kong to get my papers processed. I ended up deciding against that. Since Jett and I were both heading up north, we decided it would be fun to spend the week together traveling. Besides, I was heading for Yanji, which is a bilingual city (Korean and Chinese), and very close to a sacred Korean mountain; Jett, who speaks Korean and is very interested in Korean culture, wanted to go see it. Since Tim had offered us a place to stay in Shenzhen, we decided to leave from there. When I first went online to book plane tickets, I went to Orbitz.com; tickets from Shenzhen to Changchun were almost USD $950 there. Jett was convinced we could get them more cheaply. Indeed, using eLong.com, we managed to find tickets for just over USD $200. Jett and I booked onto the same flight.
Then, Jett got his work papers. These required that he have his work visa processed in Hong Kong. There was a big “uh-oh” couple of hours, before it was resolved that he would take a day trip to Hong Kong, and have his visa 1-day processed. That ended up working out fine; in fact, it was better than fine. He got to see HK, and it took less time and cost less than he expected.
A correction: I began my last entry with a description of a “northern food” restaurant, featuring “Over the Bridge Noodles.” It was not actually a Northern restaurant, nor were the attendants Northerners. It was Yunnan food, and I can only imagine the people were Yunnanese. To this day, I don't know why they spoke such pure Mandarin.
One day, during perhaps the second week in Zhuhai, a trainee was demoing something, and was asking the class for likes and dislikes. The trainee called on Ambuj: “what do you like?”
“Smoking.”
The trainee wrote it on the board, in the column “likes”. Then, she went on: “Okay, who can tell me something you dislike? How about you, Diana?”
“Smoking.”
I think only Diana could have carried that off without it sounding offensive or rude.
At some point, I forced myself to watch the video of my first day teaching, the day I taught the Chinese class. I was the quintessential absent-minded professor. The back of my shirt was untucked. I kept checking my books, pushing my glasses up my nose, darting back and forth. The only thing that was missing was a crooked bow tie.
Crossing the street in China is like playing Human Frogger. There is simply no better way of putting it. You hop between lanes, one lane at a time. Sometimes, you have to hop back a lane to avoid getting smooshed. Sometimes, you think you've cleared a level, but there's a boss waiting for you at the end—a herd of bicycles, perhaps, or an SUV driving on the sidewalk. Yet despite all of these street dangers—speeding cars, people driving literally two inches away from one another, etc—you see surprisingly little car damage or scraped paint (less true up here in the North). And you hear about remarkably few toe fatalities, which is the thing I always worry about when I'm standing on the double yellow line. This could mean one of two things—people are exceptionally good drivers, or almost every accident is lethal, and the cars (and the people) involved are totaled, thus reducing the incidence of such minor problems as paint scrapes and missing bumpers.
On the way to No. 11 Primary School, there was a little cluster of restaurants, one of which we decided to try out for dinner one day. Diana spoke enough Chinese to discover that it was Hunan food.
“That's supposed to be incredibly spicy,” Said Jett. “I wonder which food is spicier, Hunan or Sichuan?”
Diana translated this question for the waitress. She rolled her eyes.
“Hunan, dummy. Like, puh-lease! Those Sichuan wussies ain't got nuthin' on us!”
That may not be exactly what she said, but that was the gist of it. This made Jett, a great aficionado
of spicy food, very excited. The waitress asked,
“Do you want your food spicy?”
“Yes!” said Jett.
“Maybe just a little bit less that usual,” said Nick. Diana conveyed that yes, we would like spicy—almost the full burn, but not quite. The waitress looked at us, like, “you're sure? I don't think can handle it. . .” But she kept on taking our order. Diana spoke for us, consulting us on which of the various dishes we would like.
A while later, the first dish came out. It was a fish, I believe, in a metal bowl. It was soaking in a broth which was absolutely full of spicy peppers. The bowl was on an iron rack, which kept it above a little pan with a white solid inside of it. The waitress leaned over and lit this solid on fire with a lighter. This was going to be delicious
We couldn't tell if the meat was cooked or not, so we decided to let the broth boil first. Unfortunately, it never got to that point; the waitress came back a few minutes later and whisked the bowl away from us. It was replaced with an identical bowl, except this time, there were no peppers in the broth. Not a one.
I can only infer that they really didn't think we could handle the amount of spice they were going to throw at us. If that is truly the case, I am deeply insulted. How condescending is it, to have a dish taken off your table, because the restaurant doesn't think your weak Western taste buds can take the heat? The dish, unadorned with peppers, was rather bland. The rest of the food wasn't quite so bland, but it was far from spicy; I can only guess that they neutered all of our dishes that evening.
There are two types of busses in Zhuhai—those with air conditioning, and those without. Those with cost 2 kuai, and those without cost 1, so the no-A/C busses are usually less crowded. All of this has nothing to do with what I originally planned on saying, which was this: the non-A/C busses all have forward-facing vents on the roofs, which make them look like spiny-backed dragons.
Okay, if you read nothing else, read this. I have done too good a job explaining what I did, and a poor job explaining what I planned on doing. The situation was this: I wanted to teach English in a school in China. A later blog entry will document the process I went through of getting in touch with schools, but at this point in time, in Zhuhai, I had narrowed it down to two. Both had offered me a job, with comparable salaries, hours, benefits, etc. Both were also up north, in Jilin Province. Despite the fact that it would have been awesome to have a snow-less winter, I wanted to be up north because they speak a purer dialect of Mandarin. During the upcoming National Week, I decided to visit both of them. The first school was called the Sino-American Denver Foreign Language School, based in Changchun, Jilin Province. I had very low hopes for this school; my main correspondent was a Chinese woman named Diana; her English was good, but not flawless, and my emails had been responded to a bit spottily. I had talked with her on the phone briefly, but it was a very strange conversation. It was supposed to be an interview, according to her most recent email. I received her call on my cell phone one evening in the middle of dinner. I left the room and picked it up.
“Hello, this is Diana from the Sino-American Language School.”
“Hello, this is Charles Cushing.”
“Yes, is this Charles?”
“Uh, yes, yes it is.”
A long pause.
“So, do you have any questions for us?”
That was unexpected. She had said there was to be an interview; she didn't mention that I was going to be interviewing her. I pulled a few questions out of my butt, nothing substantial. She answered them.
“Okay, it was good to talk to you, goodbye.”
And that was it. I returned to dinner, perplexed.
In the last month of our correspondence, I had been transferred to a woman named Tracey, a Westerner. This was a bit of a comfort—at least now I had proof that there were other foreign teachers working there—I still couldn't get all the info I wanted. There are many disreputable Chinese schools out there, and I had heard and read dozens of horror stories about people being exploited by their schools. My primary concern was with being able to get a working visa—if the school couldn't answer my questions about those point-blank, then it was instantly struck from the list.
The other school was called Paul's English, based in Yanji, an hour from the North Korean border, and capital of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture. I all but assumed I would end up at Paul's—I had been in contact with Donna, a foreign teacher there, practically all summer. She was from Montana, and she seemed very friendly. Incidentally, she had gotten her start teaching in China in Zhuhai, too. When I first contacted them, Paul's English didn't have any room for me, so my first couple rounds of emails with Donna were sent under the conception that I was not actually about to be offered a job. This game me a chance to ask many direct questions about China and Chinese schools without fear of a biased answer. Donna shot very straight with me, and gave thorough, detailed answers to my questions. A few weeks before I left for China, Donna emailed me saying that a slot had just opened up, and I was welcome to come work with them in Yanji.
Despite my strong leaning towards Paul's, I declined to give either school an affirmative answer. I almost went ahead and signed on with Paul's from Zhuhai, so I could have my visa in-hand when I got there; in retrospect, that would have been a terrible mistake. Anyway, my ticketing situation was such that I had to go through Changchun to get to Yanji anyway, so I thought I might as well stop at the Sino-American Denver School while I was there. It was the middle of a national holiday, so nobody had class, but I hoped someone would at least be able to show me around.
The authoritative plan ended up being like this: Jett and I would go to Shenzhen and spend the weekend with Tim, whom I had contacted earlier in the week, and who had graciously offered us his home for a few days. Our plane to Changchun departed the following Monday. We would stay in Changchun through Wednesday, and see what happened with Sino-American. Regardless, after that we would get on a train and spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Yanji, with Paul's. [I had been having trouble getting in touch with Paul's of late, and up until just a few days before we boarded the train to Yanji, they didn't know we were going to be coming]. If I liked Paul's and Yanji, I'd stay there; if not, I'd get right back on the train and go back to Changchun.
So that was that. It was a flexible plan. We had hotels booked in both cities (although we had limited information on them; 9 times out of 10, the internet censorship software blocked the website we wanted to use, so I called my dad and asked him to pick a hotel and a hotel in Changchun, and make reservations for us. He kindly obliged),
In the forefront of my mind during all of this was the comforting fact that this was my year, and I could do whatever I ding-dang well pleased with it. If I ever didn't like where I was, I could just hop a plane back to America. And with an easy exit so close at hand, I've never had to worry about using it. On late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I put my head on my pillow and went to sleep for the last time in Zhuhai.
