Teaching

How do I put this? Teaching is…simultaneously the hardest, easiest,
and most tiring thing I have ever done. Just so you have an idea of my
schedule, I teach 23 classes of about 60 kids each, for a grand total
of over 1,200 students. This is a pretty standard class size for
China. If you have 1.2 billion people, you can’t have class sizes of
30 or less. It just ain’t gonna happen. Because English conversation
is considered a “light” subject, I teach mostly in the evening, when
all the electives take place. Some days, like today, I don’t finish
teaching until 10 pm.

And this is what makes teaching hard or easy. The kids I have earlier
in the day are wonderful. They are engaged, excited, and eager. The
ones I start teaching at 9 pm are an utter nightmare. For example, the
other day, I taught my earliest class at 11 am. The kids were great. I
was doing a unit on jobs. They were having great discussions about why
people choose their jobs. This one girl wrote such an awesome
advertisement for a tour guide job that I just about burst from pride.
I wanted to frame her paper and keep it forever. It was an awesome
day.

And then there are days like today. My 8 pm class didn’t do their
homework. Not a single person in a class of over 60 people. And it
wasn’t like I assigned anything much. They were supposed to make a
nametag with an English name for their desks. No big deal, right?
Except none of them did it! So I tell myself, ok, fine, I teach an
unimportant subject, they might ignore the homework. So I move along
with the lesson. There is your standard amount of not paying attention
for that time of the night. I have to use all my breath support not to
strain my voice. The usual. But then we move into the activity where
they write their own ad for a fictional job at a fictional company. I
heard a good buzz of conversation for the fifteen minutes and I even
saw some people bent over their desks like they were concentrating.

Boy was I wrong.

Not a single group completed the task.

They didn’t even try! Not a single group! I’m used to a few slackers,
but not an entire class. I have never been so mad in my life. I
threatened them with everything from Hell to the headmaster if they
ever pulled anything like that ever again. Hopefully it will be
enough. I have no idea what to do with this sort of classroom
management situation. None whatsoever.

I have been struggling with what to do about my class size and
learning dynamics. I have been fortunate to have an excellent
education with personal time with my teachers. These experiences were
invaluable to my academic and personal development. I want to give
these sorts of experiences to my students, but there is no way I will
learn all their names, much less get to know any of them.

And then there’s the problem that English conversation is considered a
fluff topic because it’s not covered in the gaokao. The gaokao is the
dreaded Chinese high school exit examination. English grammar is an
integral part of the test, but speaking and listening are excluded.
The result is an entire generation of Chinese who can read away but
can’t think to carry a simple conversation.  So my class is
unimportant. The head teacher even made a point of telling my
assistant that I could play hooky whenever I want because my class is
pointless.

This attitude is pretty pervasive in the student body as well. There
are the great students who love English and learning, but there are
also those who don’t give a rat’s ass. I have been struggling with
these different forces in determining how much I should put into my
job. On the one hand, I want to inspire these kids and make them want
to learn this language I love so much. On the other, there is such
institutional inertia that this is unrealistic. On the one hand, I
want to help the kids who struggle, but on the other hand, I have so
many students that there is no way I can even identify them
accurately.

A lot of the expats I have met tell me I should teach the ones who
want to learn.

On my good days, I bristle at the suggestion. I want to teach them
all! And they’re all going to be brilliant, and have doors opened to
them, and have awesome lives! Each individual is special and needs to
be nurtured! These are the thoughts I have when I leave a good class.
It’s very American of me to think that everyone deserves a shot and a
fair try. China does not work this way. I can feel the Chinese
teachers and my assistant as well just look at me knowingly. They
think I will lose this idealism. They are probably right, but it’s
easy on good days.

And then there are days…like today… when I understand why Chinese
teachers still beat their students.

9/11

September 11, 2013

Passed my first 9/11 in a country that doesn’t care a whit about 9/11.
To be perfectly honest, I am so wrapped up in my own tensions and
fears that I forgot the significance of the date until late afternoon.
And I suppose, in the most technical sense, it wasn’t 9/11. In the US,
it was still the 10th, but it still felt strange to be the only person
for miles and miles who even noticed for a minute that this day was
even remotely different.

As a person with ambitions in international politics, I struggle with
how to remember 9/11 appropriately. On the one hand, I feel compelled
to remember how terrible that day was. I was just short of 11 years
old when it happened, and to this day I have a perfect mental picture
of the towers burning. This is the emotional side of remembrance, and
it is worthy of recognition. The political side of me, however, is
uncomfortable with this response. Every year I feel the need to look
up clips of news footage and watch it over and over. In my head I
rebuild the significance of the date, but it has been 12 years now.
The response to the attacks did not make us better as a nation. In
fact, I think our fear has caused us to cheapen what we hold dear. The
executive stretches the limits of its power every term,
anti-immigration sentiment is rife (although the tides may be shifting
again), we see threats everywhere, and we as a nation are so weary of
conflict that public sentiment can’t even be roused when a dictator
gasses children to death in their homes.

I want to remember, because this day has profoundly shaped who I am
and who I will become, but when does remembrance become a hindrance to
action in the present? When do the fears of the past become irrelevant
to our present battles? How do we balance letting go with memory?

These are questions I cannot answer, but it is cathartic to ask them anyway.

Independence

September 8, 2013

I think I have found my big culture shock issue.  It’s not the
spitting, or the public urination, or the insane traffic, or the bones
in the food, or any of the other daily nuisances that I heard other
expats complain about in their blogs. For me, it is the utter lack of
independence I have been allowed since coming to Yuncheng.

My school was nice enough to arrange for me to have a teaching
assistant, Mary. Mary is really nice and helpful, and she lives just
across the courtyard from me. She helped me buy my cell phone and she
bargains for a good price on our food. But she is new at this job, and
takes it very seriously, which means she is extremely protective. I
have taken to standing at least an arm’s distance away when we cross
the street, otherwise she will hold my hand. I tried to make myself
believe it’s because she was nervous about crossing, but really that’s
utter bull.

This protectiveness goes beyond my assistant to my waiban as well. My
waiban is kind of like the person in charge of foreign teachers. She
helps me get Internet (somewhat unsuccessfully thus far) and all those
sorts of household things.  So, I need to go to Xi’an tomorrow to do
some things with my bank. No big deal, right? Get my assistant to help
me buy a ticket, hop on a train, do my thing, come back, done. Boy was
I wrong. My waiban is convinced that I won’t be able to navigate the
train system on my own, and I think she might have threatened my
assistant with hellfire if something goes wrong. So now I have two
very worried Chinese women telling me not to go to Xi’an. Some of
their advice is very helpful. They have written instruction in Chinese
for me to show cab drivers, random passersby, and train officials in
case I get lost. I have every sort of language safeguard possible, but
they are still convinced I won’t be able to navigate everything.

It makes me wonder if it’s sexism more than protectiveness. If I were
a man, I don’t think the same sort of fuss would be made over a simple
train and taxi combo. Good Chinese girls don’t travel hundreds of
miles alone. Nor do they drink whiskey, as my scandalized assistant
pointed out.

Somehow though, I think it goes beyond that, at least as far as Mary
is concerned. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks her job is to be my
caretaker of sorts, because she certainly acts like it. She wakes me
up in the morning and acts concerned when I don’t go to sleep when she
does. She even refused to let me help cook dinner last night, even
though I told her I would cook. I had to hold my tongue when I was cut
out of this simple pleasure. Cooking is something I am good at in all
languages, and it is a soothing activity for me.  I was really looking
forward to having a comforting and familiar part to my routing, but I
even had to fight to do the dishes. One of these days, I will have to
tie her to a chair and make her watch me cook. I won’t burn anything
down, I promise.

I think a lot of this is my fault. I am allowing myself to be coddled
because I don’t want to offend anyone. Well, this approach has gotten
me nowhere but frustrated and bored from inactivity. And I already
insulted my waiban by not asking her to come to Xi’an with me.  Time
to take control of my situation. I am not a child and I won’t be
treated as such, no matter how well-intentioned the treatment is. If I
keep letting this happen, I will run home screaming. No more.

And it just started raining!!!

Later the same day…

I have an addendum to previous comments on the state of Yuncheng.
Yuncheng, it turns out, is a county and not just a city. I am living
in LinYi, which is a village/suburb about 40 minutes away from
Yuncheng proper. There are lots of these suburb-type areas, and when
Ameson told us we would be going to Yuncheng, they meant the county
and not the city. I have a feeling this omission was more than a
little on purpose, but oh well.

I went to WanRong to visit Mary’s family today. They are incredibly
warm and welcoming people. Her mother, Mama Li, as I have taken to
calling her in my head, immediately decided to adopt me and sent me
home with a gigantic bag of food. Dontcha just love moms?

Anyway, WanRong is a much bigger suburb than LinYi. It verges on its
own urban area. There is a lot more happening in WanRong. It’s closer
to the level of activity I saw in Yuncheng city when I went out with
the expats the other night. It’s still very isolated, and people still
stare and point at me in the street, but it has real oomph. My
assistant confessed to me that she is not too thrilled to live
somewhere as boring as LinYi. It’s much poorer, dirtier, and quieter
than WanRong. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one less than stoked
on this neighborhood.

Pizza

September 6, 2013

Praise and glory be, there is pizza in Yuncheng! And not just Pizza
Hut, good pizza! And whiskey! Good whiskey! And expats! Cool expats
that I want to get to know!

I know I won’t do this expat thing all the time, it’s incredibly
expensive and time-consuming. It took about an hour just to get into
town, but just knowing this kind of escape is even an option makes me
think I can hack it.

Expectations

September 5, 2013

Surprise, surprise, Yuncheng is not like Milwaukee. From the air, I
first thought was that it looked like Davis or Sacramento. That wasn’t
a bad thought because I quite like Davis. But then I landed.

The teachers from English Village, the English collective trying to
bring more teachers to Yuncheng, gave us the most ecstatic greeting I
have ever seen. They knew us all by name and insisted on carrying our
baggage. They then proceeded to drive us to our hotel. I have never
been so unnerved by a 30 minute drive in my life.

People have described Yuncheng as “developing” in the past 36 hours.
Thus far, that seems to be inaccurate. From just the car ride, it
seemed clear to me that Yuncheng is developing at the state’s pace,
not the market’s. Like Shanghai, there is construction everywhere. But
unlike Shanghai, the sites sit empty of workers, buildings decaying
even as they are built. Whole apartment complexes stand empty, the
walls collecting grime that contrasts sharply to the concept art on
display. A road that was built like a main thoroughfare was empty at
rush hour. People drove like all the worst rumors you have heard about
China. In Shanghai, at least some semblance of order rules the roads.
In Yuncheng, it hearkens to the Wild West. All of it points to big
plans with no grassroots support to make them happen. I kept thinking
the city seemed sick. It is depopulated for its infrastructure, which
to me usually indicates economic illness or an actual disaster.

In the space of that drive, I realized that Yuncheng is not Davis, and
nor is it Milwaukee. It is Tijuana, before the current revival.
Yuncheng has evident levels of dirt and poverty that so far I have
associated with Mexico, especially rural Mexico. I suppose this
thought should have comforted me, but it Mexico I can speak the
language, which makes all the difference. So at that point, I was
starting to panic.

The hotel didn’t improve matters much either. The hallways were dark,
the bed was harder than I thought possible, and my room overlooked a
garbage heap. I was desperately trying to keep a positive attitude,
but I could feel it slipping. Then our hosts took us out to dinner,
which helped. The food was quite good, and unfamiliar to me. Cold
dishes and spicy food with dark vinegar predominated. One of the
teachers taught us how to play a drinking game called “Boasting.” It’s
basically the Chinese version of B.S., but with dice and baijiu.

This morning I was placed at Lin Yi No. 1 Middle School. According to
the English Village folk, it’s on of the best middle schools in
Yuncheng. I must have done something right because I have my own
complex. Not an apartment, but a complex surrounding a courtyard. I
have a bedroom and a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. All this used
to belong to the headmaster at some point and it’s right next door to
the school. I had internet earlier today, but it cut out. When it was
working, it was actually the fastest connection I have had in China so
far. I think with a little nesting it will be quite cozy.

I was not so optimistic when I first arrived, however. The apartment
had not been inhabited in over a year, but I did not know that at the
time, so all I saw was a filthy apartment, peeling paint, and
decorations for a 60 year old Chinese man. I had to take some very
deep breaths to keep myself calm and collected. It was not helping
that I had just been separated from the group of people who also found
themselves in the same predicament. We clung to each other in Shanghai
because there was nobody else. You get really close, really fast when
you share the same goals and fears. And then they were gone, and I was
along with my assistant, who lives across the courtyard.

This is where going far away to college came in handy. My pre-college
self would have felt the panic clawing away at her composure and would
have probably burst into tears. And I was close to feeling as scared
as I did before college. This feeling of disjointedness certainly felt
akin to orientation. I’ll be truthful, at that point, I thought about
packing my bags and booking it back to Shanghai. In fact, I was even
considering leaving Ameson entirely and go look for a job on my own
terms. But then I remembered that college didn’t destroy me. And then
the determined part of me decided that this wasn’t going to be the
thing to beat me. And then I calmed down. I proceeded to distract
myself with cleaning. Now my floor shines, my
slightly-softer-than-rock-hard bed calls to me, and I am relatively at
peace. I feel like I can, in fact, do this. Let’s just see how long
that feeling lasts.

Flexibility

September 4, 2013

When I checked in at the airport, the lady at the counter asked me three times to clarify my pronunciation. She couldn’t quite believe that I would actually take this flight.

So much happened in the past few days that I am not sure I will be able to chronicle it all faithfully.  There were so many cities under discussion and so many options popped up only to disappear suddenly that I’m sure I have forgotten most of them. In my last post, I was torn between Nanjing and Yuncheng. Nanjing is pretty much the nicest city in China. It has a thriving expat community, the city itself is beautiful and the food is supposed to be excellent. However, there was only one post available in Nanjing, and it went to a girl who has Type 1 diabetes and needed to be in a city with an international hospital. Something to do with her insulin type. It’s hard to begrudge her that spot, but someone’s gotta do it!

In all seriousness though, Nanjing became less important when I found out there was an opportunity to intern in the Ameson office in Shanghai. Teaching has always been a means to my end of being in China, so I was really excited to have an opportunity not to teach. I envisioned crafting a position where I would be a liason between the Chinese staff at Ameson Shanghai and AYC participants. I think a lot of the program’s problems could be at least minimized with a native English speaker around. I made my pitch to the director, but I think they went for somebody who speaks more Chinese. Again, reasonable but disappointing.

That left Yuncheng. And thus, to Yuncheng I go. I’m not disappointed by the placement, I’m actually a little excited, but I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around teaching again. I had started to count on the internship, which was stupid to do, but my mind did it anyway. So here I am, blogging in the airport and waiting to go to a town I know virtually nothing about. Another guy who is going to Yuncheng made an apt analogy to my thinking. He said that Yuncheng is like Milwaukee. Nobody goes to Milwaukee for vacation. There is nothing hugely exciting there, it’s not a destination. But living in Milwaukee is not bad at all. People who live in Milwaukee love it. It’s supposed to be a nice place, and people in Wisconsin are hugely nice, so that can’t hurt. I find it hugely comforting to think of Yuncheng as Milwaukee. I can wrap my mind around Milwaukee and it gives me a familiar point of reference.

If I’m perfectly rational about it, I remember that Yuncheng is going to be perfectly fine. All my anxiety is connected to this bloody dearth of information. If there were at least one well-designed website in English describing how awesome the city is and how great the food is and how beautiful the mountains are, I would be much more at ease. But there is no such website, we only have a Wikipedia page that doesn’t even mention the mountains, only the sex trafficking scandal from a few years back.

At the very least, I’m not in Shenzhen. The people who actually went ended up in a really terrible situation. The school cancelled their contract and “renegotiated” it on ridiculously bad terms. Their apartments are filthy. Pretty much every time the school had an opportunity to shortchange the teachers they have taken advantage of it fully. I read a blog post about a month ago about how terrible it is to work at Shenzhen Yaohua. I discounted it as a privileged American whining about nothing. Now I believe it. Every other teacher I have spoken to has loved their schools and the people there bend over backward to make them happy. Yaohua is not the rule, it is the exception.

I am looking forward to a month from now when I can look back on this post and realize how silly my anxieties are. Because really they are. It’s a city of five million people, not some Podunk town without electricity. Everything will be fine. I just need to keep an open mind and an open attitude. I want to like it so I will. Just promise to send me care packages, ok?