Our only question in the end is, do the Chinese also associate the moon with madness?

This post has been waiting a fwe days because sometimes I just can’t access WordPress. It makes me antsy.

students get snack time twice a day. Yesterday they had some sort of green fruit that smelled very citrusy. In class eight, one of my favorite classes, Cindy gave me one.

“What is it?”

“Orange. “

“Then why is it green?”

She consulted with Mandy in Chinese for a moment, then told me, “Chinese orange.”

It was super tasty. They made faces and told me it was “not sweet”. I taught them the word “sour”. I think it was sweet enough; it wasn’t bitter like most oranges, which I don’t like.

As I was leaving school on Tuesday, my class eight students surrounded me, yelling “Hallo teacher!!” They are by far my loudest class. Yuly turned around and stumbled her way through saying “Happy Mid-Autumn Festival”, which caused everyone to break out into laughter.

“Thank you! Happy Moon Festival to you. Will you eat mooncakes?”

“Yeeeessssss!!!!” they chorused.

“Are they good?”

“Noooooo!!”

That evening I went to Panyu to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival with Lindsey. As we must do on festival days, we had a big dinner: potatoes in vinegar, tofu in spicy sauce, green onion pancakes (with which I’m quickly becoming obsessed), and beer.

We walked around the fair area, where there were lots of vendors selling toys and food and tea. Anything neon, blinking, glowing, and noisy, or preferably all of those, were a big hit. Children walked around with paper lanterns with candles burning inside. China does a lot to mess with your ideas about safety standards. We also watched part of a dance show—some traditional dance, some Britney Spears.

Another traditional thing to do during Mid-Autumn Fest is answer riddles. There were areas set up with riddles hung on banners. Whoever yelled out the answer won a prize. You could also win prizes in the carnival area. The fullness of the moon should remind you of reuniting with the fullness of your family, so most things are very family/kid-oriented. We watched children win prizes by moving as many ping-pong balls as possible with a pair of chopsticks and playing Chinese piñata (hit a drum and a gong while blindfolded).

We ate our mooncakes in Lindsey’s apartment. Well, we only ate one. They are much too dense to eat very much. They were the Cantonese kind with preserved egg as a filling. Alas, the kind we had was more square than round like the moon, but we ate it anyway, The pastry shell is delicious, sweet and buttery. It’s incredibly dense and heavy. The filling is indescribable—like very smooth peanut butter, or Vaseline, in texture and appearance. It tastes vaguely sweet and nutty, maybe like almond. But the yolk in the middle is a bit salty, and definitely more egg-tasting. Lindsey says northern mooncakes are more likely to have meat fillings; ew. I would like to try the Taiwanese mooncakes, which apparently usually have fruit and cream inside. Lindsey tried Hong Kong mooncakes in her Chinese class. She said they were very good.

Here is Tai Shan, our baby panda, eating some of our mooncake.

1966-1976

The Chinese staff takes turns supervising students during the free time. They pin red armbands to their sleeves, emblazoned with “Supervisor” in English and Chinese. One of the guys came in on Friday and David, the curmudgeonly British Chemistry teacher pointed to his armband and joked that he looked like Mao.

It took a minute of translation from the Chinese Chemistry teacher before the man smiled and said, “Ah, the Chairman.” And then he laughed and said something in Chinese. The Chinese Chem teacher laughed also, and asked us, “He says to be glad then, that it’s not the Cultural Revolution. You know the Cultural Revolution?” and we nodded. The man in the armband then acted out a little scene of an interaction between a police officer and a teacher during the Cultural Revolution:

“Police man,” and he strutted about a bit, puffing himself up big.
“Teacher,” and he bowed submissively, then covered his head with his arms.
“Wham, wham,” and he imitated an officer beating a man with a club.

He straightened up and laughed and said in English, “Everything was wrong.”

We believe in one.

We ended up in an uncomfortable conversation over our green beans with sliced pork at the school canteen yesterday.

J is in charge of DP. DP is the section for kids going to schools off the mainland. Most go to the UK, some go to Canada, and a few go to Australia, the US, or Hong Kong. One of the kids he is working with has suddenly got the idea that he wants to go to Stanford and get a degree in Theology. J says, “What for? You haven’t any background in theology. There is no way Stanford will let you in for theology, because they’ll think as soon as you’re there you’ll switch over to economics. That’s what I think you’re trying to do.” The student insists that’s not the plan, despite the fact that he knows very little about theology, has had almost no religious exposure, doesn’t know what kind of job he would get with this degree and hasn’t looked into what the Theology program at Stanford is like.

S and M find this interesting. They know which student J is talking about. This student is also tutored by F, another American teacher. F is also in charge of China Week, when students go out and volunteer for charity in impoverished areas. Some kids, they know, have done study-abroad language programs or home-stays with Christian families, and come back calling themselves Christian. S asserts that, as an evangelical Christian, he hopes that the kid would get some understanding of true Christianity from the Stanford program, because there is no religious sensibility/presence in China. J hopes he switches to Economics.

This kicks off an awkward conversation on Christianity and religion in China. This, by the way, is not a good conversation to be having in a school, particularly in the cafeteria. S sort of blithely starts going on about Communist atheism, which made J quite uncomfortable and he tried to shush S. S knows he can’t talk about this with students or Chinese teachers, but he feels okay discussing it with us. J reminds him that most Chinese Christians are Christian for utilitarian reasons: networking, English skills, guanxi. (I have to ask: Is this an effect of growing capitalism in China? Is it an inversion of the old Weberian classic theory that Christianity encourages capitalism?)
S agrees maybe, but that it’s important for Christians to be able to experience a true Christian experience, to experience life in the manner of Jesus Christ. This, I think, is partially in reference to China Week. J does not want Western teachers using China Week as an opportunity to demonstrate living in the model of Christ’s self-sacrifice.

J isn’t opposed in the slightest to S and M believing anything they please, or experiencing Christ in their daily life. He is not religious, but he absolutely believes in according dignity and respect to those who do believe. But it’s not a good thing to talk about, especially at this school, where parents have a huge say in what happens. Our contracts explicitly forbid foreign teachers from teaching Western sexual morality, politics, and religion, unless the syllabus demands it. J got in trouble with a Malay Catholic parent who demanded he be fired for having the students read a book with the word “fuck” in it once, on the grounds that it violates the prohibition on teaching sexuality. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that a CCP liason would inquire about religious influence in school.

The whole thing was fascinating to me. What is religion—personal experience or a social tool? Does persistent Buddhism/Daoism invalidate new claims to Christianity (can Christianity be syncretic at all)? For S, of course, it’s all a matter faith stemming from experience. Such a Christian thing, this idea of belief. Of choice, of conversion, of conscious religiosity. “Belief” has little to do with most religions in the world, and certainly not pre-Christian ones. Even pre-Reformation, the idea of “belief” was at the group and not individual level. Post-Reformation though, and the whole European definition of religion hinges on “belief”.

It’s terribly dangerous to the Party of course. Either you believe and belong, or don’t believe and don’t belong. There are options. This is not true for the Chinese—either you are Chinese or you are not. You have no option to not-believe. Christianity is so violent and so humane because it presupposes that everyone is equal in a crucial way—they have the potential for belief. Equality, choice, individual experience; hence, democracy, freedom, personal rights.

There are five official religions in China: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism. No Hinduism, no Judaism, and the omission of Orthodox Christianity is a frequent sore point with Russia. There is limited freedom of religion in China, though many groups (especially the religions of the book) object to oversight by an atheist body. In all cases, it is forbidden by law for foreigners to proselytize among Chinese (though they may do so amongst themselves). I hope to go Catholic services in Guangzhou sometime—we will see what they are like.

Hallo teacha!

The walk to work was so very pleasant today. It’s always a nice temperature at 8 in the morning, and today it was not humid. Just lovely.

There is no better start to the day than dozens of adorable tiny Chinese children walking past in lines, holding hands, piping “Good morning, teacher!”, “Good morning, teacher!”. It’s like being a celebrity in a very small parade.

Mon Sept 17 Everybody knows it.

Pretty much everyday something like this happens:
Before lunch
Student: teacher, what is this English test that they are giving us tomorrow? 

Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
During lunch
Teacher: Did you hear about the meeting?
Me: No…?
Teacher: James told me about it. We have a meeting at 5:00 today. In the MYP Head office.
Me: Where is that?
Teacher: I’m not sure. The 4th floor of one the buildings. I don’t know.

I’ve been talking as much as possible with the other English teachers, to suss out as much as possible what I’m supposed to do. Amazingly, there really is no plan. I was told there was no set syllabus, no curriculum. There isn’t. We have IELTs prep, and other than that there’s not much. I have no idea what they should’ve learned in Year 9, no idea what they’ll be expected to know in Year 11. We have no department standard, so I don’t know what the other English teachers are going to teach unless they tell me specifically.

Today we had a meeting amongst the Year 10 English teachers (our first meeting, the third week of school). It became very clear that indeed, we have no organized curriculum, nor any method of coordinating our classes. Crazy. I seriously find that insane. Chris Miller, an independent educator who works with Chinese students prepping for university in the UK, Australia, and North America, facilitated the meeting. He voiced every concern I’ve had. It was incredibly reassuring. Somebody else thinks it’s a good idea to have a unified set of goals. Thinks it’s a good idea to teach by topic (all my lessons are set up topic/content where “content” is some language point). Thinks it’s a good idea to have some record somewhere of what has been taught in the past. Although nothing will change with the way things are run here, it was reassuring.

Sun Sept 16 Ulysses sounds too much like a Joyce reference. Poor Homer.

Had an epic Friday in Guangzhou. And by epic, I mean Homeric, and by Homeric, I mean like the Odyssey, and by like the Odyssey I mean lots and lots of wandering around semi-lost. I was trying to meet some people at a bar for happy hour, and I started off on the wrong side of town. After failing to find an available taxi, walking around for two hours, and impressively navigating myself across downtown on a bus, I made it to the general area. Major triumph. Unfortunately, I failed to find the specific location. Lindsey met me by Tianhe and we walked around more (my legs are gonna be strong). I was sort of deliriously tired by then, so we just had some pizza (the only sure vegetarian bet around) and went to Panyu. Also, our waitress’s name was Stanley. Oh, Stanley. And she looked really nerdy. It was wonderful.

On Saturday Lindsey and I took a bus to Shenzhen for a beach party Shenzhen is down on the coast, right across from Hong Kong. It’s the border town. It is new, fast, wealthy, growing… the epitome of new China. We didn’t actually see Shenzhen, because we went to a beach past town, and we drove through at night.

The ride there was too long, so we didn’t get there until 11pm. We would have liked to get there earlier, because the police shut it down at 4am (it was supposed to go until about 9am). The party itself was great though. Good music when we showed up, light shows, fireworks, a big plate of grilled food (including some veggies). We got some beer and went for a walk on the beach and built a sandcastle and tried to figure out what all these Chinese people were looking for in the water with their flashlights. The beach was lovely, the night was warm, lots of people (foreign and Chinese) around setting up tents and dancing. We danced to one of the DJs, but the next DJ played only Euro house which is too boring to be able to dance to. We sat and talked and got a little drunk and went to the beach again. On the bus ride home, I had an excellent conversation with an English guy.

Thurs Sept 13 Eat rice.

Here are some notes I took on the Chinese language from an excellent little book, Hippocrene Beginner’s Series: Beginner’s Chinese (With 2 Audio CDs), by Yong Ho.

Morphemes in Chinese are monosyllabic; syllables are morphemes. Most words are di- or poly-syllabic. All syllables are Vowel or Consonant-Vowel, with occasional CVC occurrences (the 2nd C in those cases will be the nasal –n, -ng, or –r. R is very nearly a vowel anyway.) There are six vowels, twenty-one consonants and about a dozen compound vowels (ai, ou, etc). With those consonants and vowels, and a mostly CV syllable structure, there are only about 400 possible sounds. There are four tones in Chinese: high, rising, falling-rising, and falling (also a toneless “neutral” tone, mostly for grammar particles). This increases the number of possible sounds to 1600. Grammarians estimate that English has 158,000 possible sounds.

There are a huge number of homophones in Chinese, even with tones. They are usually distinguished by context and by a system of classifiers for nouns. Classifier words come between numbers and objects. This is somewhat similar to the English construct “a pair of pants” or “a pair of scissors”. The difference is that in English it is relatively rare and in Chinese is the rule. Also “pants” and “scissors” don’t have much in common. There are about twenty common classifiers and group objects by similar characteristics; a classifier for things that are long, things that are printed, things that are clothes you wear on the top half of you body, etc. Using the right classifier with the right object is essential for being understood, or at least not being laughed at. Luckily, there is also a generic classifier that basically means “thing’ or “piece” that can be used without much trouble.

The ultimate way to distinguish between words is by their character. The most notable feature of Chinese is that is not a phonetic language. The written form of a word has no relation to its sound. Two Chinese who speak very different dialects will pronounce differently the same character, with the same meaning. Each word is a unique character or combination of characters. There are an estimated 50,000 characters in Chinese, of which about 3,000 appear with 99% frequency. Since 1956, the government has introduced 2,500 simplified characters, and knowledge of 3,000 characters is generally considered sufficient to achieve literacy. In comparison, English has an estimated 400,000- 900,000 words (there’s a lot of debate on the criteria for “English word”). Again, about 3,000 words are considered sufficient to read general English-language tests.

Mandarin, or putonghua (the common speech), is the official language of China. It is the native speech of the most populated areas (the north and southeast). It is understood by 94% of the population. Beijing Mandarin is the standards used in the media and in schools. There are seven dialect groups in China. Some linguists prefer to call them separate languages, because they are largely mutually unintelligible, but there is a complicated history between language and ethnicity, and ethnicity and unity, in China, so the official line is that they are dialects. Aside from Mandarin, they are Wu (8%), Yue (aka Cantonese, 5%), Xiang (5%), Hakka (4%), Min (aka Fukienese, 4%), and Gan (2%).
All dialects share the same written form. When all else fails, “Qing3 xie3 xia4 lai1” (“Please write it down”) can be helpful.

Monday Sept 10 Here’s what I do.

Things got really busy once school started, obviously. I still don’t have my work visa or residency permit, but I did get my official physical, so we are one step closer.

I have eight classes, each of which I teach twice a week. We alternate long week/short week. On long weeks, I teach Mon-Sat. On short week I teach Mon-Thurs and until 10:15am on Fri. I want to try to change my Saturday work schedule because technically teachers shouldn’t have long week Saturday and short week Friday. Plus, the Saturday classes are in the middle of the afternoon, which basically eliminates my weekend.

On days when I teach, I have between two and four classes a day. I almost always teach the first class (8:10-8:50am) and almost always the last class (4:40-5:20pm). This means I usually have a big chunk of time in the middle of the day to prep, do errands (if it’s not too hot), eat, and occasionally nap (they enjoy the post-lunch siesta here).

The kids are mostly good; it helps that I really like teenagers. Class 2 is expert at the “blank wall” (Me: “Here are some easy directions” Kids: Blank stare Me: “Do you understand?” Kids: Blank stare Me: “Raise your hand if you need help” Kids: Blank stare Me: “Raise your hand if you’re alive”), but the other seven classes are moderately to very helpful. The hardest part is that they are at very different levels of proficiency. They are mostly divided by proficiency, but there are some big exceptions. Class 1, for example, has a few kids who speak almost no English, and one student who is a native speaker (from Oklahoma).

Weds Sept 5 They call it controlled chaos.

Teaching is a little frustrating, but good. Disorganization is more frustrating. The fact that the people in charge are seemingly totally unconcerned with disorganization, and don’t understand how one might be frustrated by said disorganization, is even more frustrating.

Lindsey and I both want to learn Chinese right now. We are tired of being illiterate. I also want my physical, my work visa, residence permit, and to register with the Embassy right now.

Monday Sept 3 You’re the new English teacher?

So the meeting went like this:
Me: Hi, you’re Christina?
Her: Yes, you’re the new English teacher?

Ummm. She showed me around a little and told me that the main purpose of the class is prepare the students for the IELTS exam. They are Year 10 (15, 16 years old), at various levels of proficiency. She reassured me that I could do this, and I think I felt okay. Mostly, I am confused. And being told Thursday afternoon that you start teaching Monday morning is startling.

I had a glorious weekend with Lindsey and David. We met Yue Ying and Lonnie, and Ms. Yue’s son, Gai, and John, a teacher from Macau. It was a delightful evening. We ate food (decent but not great; I did eat a water beetle though), went to a bar, got a little drinky, learned a lot about China, talked about literature and stuff… It was quite nice. The next day, I spent the morning with Lindsey and some Canadians. It took longer than we expected, but she bought a spiffy new electric bike.

This morning I met the English guy who seems to actually be in charge of things, and he said that I can do whatever I like in class. That would be nice, if it’s true. I would hate to teach from the test-prep book all year. Then I went to the wrong room because they didn’t tell me the schedule correctly. It’s just so frustrating to not have the correct, if any, information. The first two classes were fine. I didn’t have much prepared because I wasn’t sure how proficient the students would be, plus I don’t have many materials and I don’t have a good idea yet what teaching will be like. In case you haven’t picked up on this yet, I’m not prepared to be a teacher. If I had known ahead of time, I would have prepared more. The attitude seems to be that I should “just teach them English” but I have a pretty string opinion that teaching is hard and teachers should trained to teach.

Whatever. I should just teach them English.

In the long break between classes I got some good stuff done, but also got really, really upset to find that my two good necklaces were tied in a tight knot. Trying to untangle them, one of the chains broke. I got really upset, which is annoying because generally when I’m upset like that it means I’m upset over something else.

I’m not sure I want to teach 15 year olds listening and speaking English. I’ll be fine, I think I can do it. I just want some fucking direction. Or a job I more interested in. I’m in China for the job and I keep getting upset about job stuff. It makes me feel like I’ve made a huge fucking mistake.

Things will get better. I’ll get more settled in the job stuff and, even better, I’ll have more non-job stuff to do. I need friends; I need to get out and see neat things; I need to get ridiculously drunk with David.