Before we could get to the Terracotta warriors, perhaps the most famous testament to a man’s desire to fight until the end – and beyond, we had to do our own battle with the Xian traffic. Later on that day our bus would get into a honking battle with another bus, only to have the other bus violently cut us off and then stop so that their driver could walk back and yell at our driver. Despite our high hopes, there was no kung fu fighting. On that front, China has been a bit of a letdown.
But back to the morning. As we were clawing our way through the traffic, we were afforded an excellent view of Xian’s old city wall, the best preserved city wall in China, running 9 miles around the center of the city. It was old, it was beautiful. It only had four openings, one in each face of the wall. Our tour guide Cindy indulged in a rare moment of criticism, and informed us that while Xian traffic is normally very efficient, the wall tends to create bottlenecks and back the traffic up a bit.
I think her statement might have managed to sum up all of China. It is a place where the future’s greatest impediment is the past. And yet the quandary is, were they to give up the past in search of a better future, would they actually be gaining anything?
There are few things as outmoded and obsolete as city walls. Most old artifacts are still capable of performing their intended function. Old pots still hold water, old cotton gins can still do whatever it was that they originally did (1). This wall keeps people neither in nor out, but it does keep them in gridlock. Somehow I doubt that was part of the plan. It would be unthinkable to destroy it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every single Xian citizen with a driver’s license hasn’t, at some point, wished that this particular national treasure were located a few miles outside of city limits.
China is China. It is almost a mantra that I have occasion to repeat daily. It is full of quirks and inefficiencies that have equal capacity to either enrage or endear. In the end, it boils down to being China. I don’t anger easily, but recently the quickest way to raise my ire has been to assume that the American way is normative without taking any time to consider the vast cultural and economic differences that make the two countries, in some ways, incomparable.
What angers me is that people come and refuse to take China on its own terms, ignoring its charms and crucifying its weaknesses. They see how it could be improved, but fail to see the cost to the national identity. And yet, where do we draw lines? Where must they sacrifice being Chinese in order to fit into the currently western-dominated business sphere? What is the price tag that we put on an identity? What should I give up of myself in order to go forward? What should I hold onto and allow to shape the way in which I advance?
Later I will get the opportunity to walk the wall. The day will be cold and eerily clammy, the sky misty and mysterious. The wall will fade into the fog about a hundred feet in either direction, and even though I know it is only 9 miles in circumference, at that time it will seem like it could stretch on forever, implacable and solid as the stones of which it is comprised. I will stand there on the wall that has stood against armies and traffic, the wall that has stood against time itself, and I will look down at the cars as they honk and scurry through the city, and I will wonder which I would prefer to be. Then I will turn and walk along the wall, through the fog, into the fog, trying to find the point where the mist touches the stone, because maybe at that point things will begin to make sense.
(1) Which, I have been told by a reliable sources, is not ‘make gin out of cotton.’ Sigh…
Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Best Clark Kent That I Can Be
I am frequently asked, “So, how is teaching?”
I usually respond with, “Err…”
It’s not that I am uncertain about what I am doing and how I feel about it. It’s just that I would hesitate to call it “teaching.”
I teach 9 classes of 40-60 students, who I see for 90 minutes once a week. That comes out to 360 – 540 students, once a week. On top of that, I am teaching ‘conversation.’ Conversation is an interesting subject, and I think is actually closer to an art class than, say, history or math. I’m not speaking in any sort of qualitative measure, but in methodology, but in purpose. I am not so much imparting knowledge as I am developing (1) a skill. Unlike art, though, I have the only frame for what sounds right, and therefore must be personally involved in everything that happens in class. Doing the rough math, in 90 minutes I could hear each person speak for between a minute and a half and two minutes and fifteen seconds. Awesome.
There are days when the lesson plans go well, the students are engaged, they are asking good questions, and I get to hear some interesting opinions. Even on those days, though, am I actually teaching anything? Is anyone getting more conversant? How would I even know?
All of the real teachers out there will probably tell me how foolhardy this is, but I’ve come to realize that I teach out of pure force of personality. I am more a conductor than a professor, more a performer than educator. I project so much that I can hear my over-enunciated syllables bounce back at me; I fill the room with my voice. I am learning to dig deep trenches of silence to foul the steps of a wandering mind, then my words erupt again: first clipped and precise and then lower and drawn out, the percussion to arrest their attention and the flow to bring them in. I am becoming a good orator, I will give myself that (2). But are they learning?
I see their eyes locked on me as I present the material, and then watch them lower when I ask them to respond. I call names and they respond, their words stiff like a marionette, a puppet master still struggling with the strings. Rome was not built in a day, but was it built on two sentences a week (2)? Today I paired them up and gave parameters for a short conversation, asking that there be no Chinese spoken for 3 minutes.
They lasted 45 seconds. I timed it.
I think we are all in denial. I hear the teachers talk about the interesting topics brought up by this or that student, but know that they are just the over embellished pearl stolen from a gross, hairy hog’s snout of a day. I do it myself. I make dragons out of windmills, for fear that the truth might reveal that my fight against poor conversational skills is insignificant, empty, and foolish.
In the end, the students who want to learn will make the effort to speak in class and those who don’t will hide at the corners and bow their heads in silent shame when they are called on. I can’t make them try, and forced compliance only makes them look stupid and me feel like a jerk. Maybe I’m copping out. It doesn’t feel good to accept someone else’s lethargy, but it feels right. Most of the time. I guess that if I can’t be Superman, I might as well become the best Clark Kent that I can (4).
(1) Trying to develop… sigh.
(2) We discussed William Blake’s The Poison Tree, and at the end of class I read it as I thought it should be read. I got a standing ovation, a nice little ego stroke for the end of the day.
(3) That is, if you are one of the 10% of the students who get called on…
(4) Caveat time. I can’t accept this. Maybe I’m still too young and idealistic. There is truth in it, and now that I look at it again, it’s kindof a DC comics version of the Serenity Prayer (5). But I cannot accept that we don’t have within us the capacity to become more than mortal. Some small seed that may remain dormant for a lifetime, but also that may, under the right conditions, erupt with blinding fury, transforming us and all around us. A grain of sand, dreaming the dreams of stars...
(5) God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
I usually respond with, “Err…”
It’s not that I am uncertain about what I am doing and how I feel about it. It’s just that I would hesitate to call it “teaching.”
I teach 9 classes of 40-60 students, who I see for 90 minutes once a week. That comes out to 360 – 540 students, once a week. On top of that, I am teaching ‘conversation.’ Conversation is an interesting subject, and I think is actually closer to an art class than, say, history or math. I’m not speaking in any sort of qualitative measure, but in methodology, but in purpose. I am not so much imparting knowledge as I am developing (1) a skill. Unlike art, though, I have the only frame for what sounds right, and therefore must be personally involved in everything that happens in class. Doing the rough math, in 90 minutes I could hear each person speak for between a minute and a half and two minutes and fifteen seconds. Awesome.
There are days when the lesson plans go well, the students are engaged, they are asking good questions, and I get to hear some interesting opinions. Even on those days, though, am I actually teaching anything? Is anyone getting more conversant? How would I even know?
All of the real teachers out there will probably tell me how foolhardy this is, but I’ve come to realize that I teach out of pure force of personality. I am more a conductor than a professor, more a performer than educator. I project so much that I can hear my over-enunciated syllables bounce back at me; I fill the room with my voice. I am learning to dig deep trenches of silence to foul the steps of a wandering mind, then my words erupt again: first clipped and precise and then lower and drawn out, the percussion to arrest their attention and the flow to bring them in. I am becoming a good orator, I will give myself that (2). But are they learning?
I see their eyes locked on me as I present the material, and then watch them lower when I ask them to respond. I call names and they respond, their words stiff like a marionette, a puppet master still struggling with the strings. Rome was not built in a day, but was it built on two sentences a week (2)? Today I paired them up and gave parameters for a short conversation, asking that there be no Chinese spoken for 3 minutes.
They lasted 45 seconds. I timed it.
I think we are all in denial. I hear the teachers talk about the interesting topics brought up by this or that student, but know that they are just the over embellished pearl stolen from a gross, hairy hog’s snout of a day. I do it myself. I make dragons out of windmills, for fear that the truth might reveal that my fight against poor conversational skills is insignificant, empty, and foolish.
In the end, the students who want to learn will make the effort to speak in class and those who don’t will hide at the corners and bow their heads in silent shame when they are called on. I can’t make them try, and forced compliance only makes them look stupid and me feel like a jerk. Maybe I’m copping out. It doesn’t feel good to accept someone else’s lethargy, but it feels right. Most of the time. I guess that if I can’t be Superman, I might as well become the best Clark Kent that I can (4).
(1) Trying to develop… sigh.
(2) We discussed William Blake’s The Poison Tree, and at the end of class I read it as I thought it should be read. I got a standing ovation, a nice little ego stroke for the end of the day.
(3) That is, if you are one of the 10% of the students who get called on…
(4) Caveat time. I can’t accept this. Maybe I’m still too young and idealistic. There is truth in it, and now that I look at it again, it’s kindof a DC comics version of the Serenity Prayer (5). But I cannot accept that we don’t have within us the capacity to become more than mortal. Some small seed that may remain dormant for a lifetime, but also that may, under the right conditions, erupt with blinding fury, transforming us and all around us. A grain of sand, dreaming the dreams of stars...
(5) God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Sino-American War in Me
I just got sucker punched by Karma, and now I’ve been laid out for a day.
SPU got here on Sunday, and as soon as they arrived, my lazy afternoons turned into frantic translation-fests. It’s really good to be busy. Sunday was a blur of room assignments and welcome-to-the-campus pomp and pageantry. On Monday I went on a long hike that, at five hours and 2,000 feet of elevation gain via uneven stone steps, was a bit more than I was planning on. Monday evening involved a bar, and I had a good time because I was enjoying getting to know everyone. Tuesday I left the apartment at 7:30, and did not get back until 11:30. The day was pretty mundane: trips to the market, trips to the grocery store, trips to the bakery, where my job was to roam around and speak Chinese whenever someone pulled my string (or that’s how it felt). When we sat down at a snack shop at about 3:30, I realized that I had skipped lunch and that this was the first time I had sat down all day long. Tuesday night also involved a bar.
So, come Wednesday, I found my legs stiff with overexertion, my head sore with exhaustion, and my voice nonexistent from overuse. I was doing my best to act responsibly, even sleeping about 7 hours a night, but my body had become accustomed to its Chinese lifestyle and was resenting this intrusion of American ideology.
A meal in China is the building block upon which relationships are built. To know someone is to share a meal with them. It seems that every “Business in China” book makes particular mention of the “business banquet,” where people are weighed and measured, deals are struck or destroyed, and the eating, if not an afterthought, is more a medium than an end in itself. This ethos is not restricted to official gatherings, but tends to be scaled down according to context, all the way down to the humble fare of which our daily routine now consists. As such, they tend to be languid affairs. The food takes a long time to come, it is eaten slowly, and it is not uncommon for half an hour to pass between the last morsel eaten and when the check is finally called for.
Not so now. Lunches are now eating with purpose, the food is consumed, the tables soon vacated. I must confess that up until this week, I tended to be the pointedly check his watch or clear his throat and ask what everyone’s plan for the day was. But one day I was left at the table, solitarily picking at the last peanuts out of the Kung Pao Chicken as everyone else rushed off to their mid day naps. Seriously. I was filled with a strange anti-patriotic regret that Chinese food is often relegated to the sub-strata of take-out. If everything someone eats reminds her or him of Panda Express, how can you blame that person for eating it quickly? Maybe I should commend them learning the names of things instead of trying to order the “Special For Two With Extra Spring Rolls.”
I have also grown to love my xioxi (rest) time. Xioxi time extends from noon until 2:30, where very little is open, and even if it is open, then the shopkeeper is probably asleep on a stool. This may be due to the Chinese habit of eating a light breakfast and then a heavy lunch. It seems reasonable that a mornings activity, fueled only by a piece of bread, then followed by a large, greasy meal could knock your system to its knees for a few hours. Bottom line is, I don’t know why we xioxi, but I like it. And, apparently, have come to depend on it.
Many of the SPU’ers, tired from their travels, have adopted the xioxi, unwittingly paying homage to their new cultural host. However, with 33 of them, someone is always doing something at any given time. And those things tend to involve translating. A moment of silence for my dearly departed xioxi time.
I think the coup-de-gras to my system was actually the bars. Now I’m going to cut you off before anyone starts waving blue and white flags or picketing… whatever it is you might feel the urge to picket. (That means you, God-squaders) This has nothing to do with alcohol, dancing, or any other of the devil’s delights. This has simply to do with loud music. (Crap. Rock n’ Roll. Fine. Only one of the devil’s delights) I’m a talker. It’s my own fault, really, but I enjoy talking, no matter how loud, and at the end of the night, my throat is pretty torn up. Factor in a mountain hike in the pollution two days ago, throw in a karaoke song or two (It’s China, I get amnesty. Especially when I’m singing Sinatra) and should I even be surprised that I can’t talk?
Part of me is detached and curious. Which lifestyle will emerge dominant? I have lamented the solitude of the last month, and wistfully remembered my American days of unending motion. Now, though, I am not so sure. Apparently being busy means I don’t have time to read or write. Being busy means that I am running around, translating for one mundane task or another, while doing nothing of consequence for myself. I’m a little curious to see which way the pendulum swings for these next three months.
Curiosity or no, the fact of the matter is that I am sitting here in between my peanut butter crackers and my empty bowl of instant noodles (closest thing to chicken noodle), sipping hot water like it’s going out of style. I guess in the end, it’s not really karma, but causality that that has been my downfall. Stupid consequences…
PS There is a cricket on my living room floor. How did it get to the fourth floor? And now, as I watch the tiny cricket hopping around the bare expanse of my living room, I can't help but sing to myself, "I'm a big, big girl, in a big, big world..."
SPU got here on Sunday, and as soon as they arrived, my lazy afternoons turned into frantic translation-fests. It’s really good to be busy. Sunday was a blur of room assignments and welcome-to-the-campus pomp and pageantry. On Monday I went on a long hike that, at five hours and 2,000 feet of elevation gain via uneven stone steps, was a bit more than I was planning on. Monday evening involved a bar, and I had a good time because I was enjoying getting to know everyone. Tuesday I left the apartment at 7:30, and did not get back until 11:30. The day was pretty mundane: trips to the market, trips to the grocery store, trips to the bakery, where my job was to roam around and speak Chinese whenever someone pulled my string (or that’s how it felt). When we sat down at a snack shop at about 3:30, I realized that I had skipped lunch and that this was the first time I had sat down all day long. Tuesday night also involved a bar.
So, come Wednesday, I found my legs stiff with overexertion, my head sore with exhaustion, and my voice nonexistent from overuse. I was doing my best to act responsibly, even sleeping about 7 hours a night, but my body had become accustomed to its Chinese lifestyle and was resenting this intrusion of American ideology.
A meal in China is the building block upon which relationships are built. To know someone is to share a meal with them. It seems that every “Business in China” book makes particular mention of the “business banquet,” where people are weighed and measured, deals are struck or destroyed, and the eating, if not an afterthought, is more a medium than an end in itself. This ethos is not restricted to official gatherings, but tends to be scaled down according to context, all the way down to the humble fare of which our daily routine now consists. As such, they tend to be languid affairs. The food takes a long time to come, it is eaten slowly, and it is not uncommon for half an hour to pass between the last morsel eaten and when the check is finally called for.
Not so now. Lunches are now eating with purpose, the food is consumed, the tables soon vacated. I must confess that up until this week, I tended to be the pointedly check his watch or clear his throat and ask what everyone’s plan for the day was. But one day I was left at the table, solitarily picking at the last peanuts out of the Kung Pao Chicken as everyone else rushed off to their mid day naps. Seriously. I was filled with a strange anti-patriotic regret that Chinese food is often relegated to the sub-strata of take-out. If everything someone eats reminds her or him of Panda Express, how can you blame that person for eating it quickly? Maybe I should commend them learning the names of things instead of trying to order the “Special For Two With Extra Spring Rolls.”
I have also grown to love my xioxi (rest) time. Xioxi time extends from noon until 2:30, where very little is open, and even if it is open, then the shopkeeper is probably asleep on a stool. This may be due to the Chinese habit of eating a light breakfast and then a heavy lunch. It seems reasonable that a mornings activity, fueled only by a piece of bread, then followed by a large, greasy meal could knock your system to its knees for a few hours. Bottom line is, I don’t know why we xioxi, but I like it. And, apparently, have come to depend on it.
Many of the SPU’ers, tired from their travels, have adopted the xioxi, unwittingly paying homage to their new cultural host. However, with 33 of them, someone is always doing something at any given time. And those things tend to involve translating. A moment of silence for my dearly departed xioxi time.
I think the coup-de-gras to my system was actually the bars. Now I’m going to cut you off before anyone starts waving blue and white flags or picketing… whatever it is you might feel the urge to picket. (That means you, God-squaders) This has nothing to do with alcohol, dancing, or any other of the devil’s delights. This has simply to do with loud music. (Crap. Rock n’ Roll. Fine. Only one of the devil’s delights) I’m a talker. It’s my own fault, really, but I enjoy talking, no matter how loud, and at the end of the night, my throat is pretty torn up. Factor in a mountain hike in the pollution two days ago, throw in a karaoke song or two (It’s China, I get amnesty. Especially when I’m singing Sinatra) and should I even be surprised that I can’t talk?
Part of me is detached and curious. Which lifestyle will emerge dominant? I have lamented the solitude of the last month, and wistfully remembered my American days of unending motion. Now, though, I am not so sure. Apparently being busy means I don’t have time to read or write. Being busy means that I am running around, translating for one mundane task or another, while doing nothing of consequence for myself. I’m a little curious to see which way the pendulum swings for these next three months.
Curiosity or no, the fact of the matter is that I am sitting here in between my peanut butter crackers and my empty bowl of instant noodles (closest thing to chicken noodle), sipping hot water like it’s going out of style. I guess in the end, it’s not really karma, but causality that that has been my downfall. Stupid consequences…
PS There is a cricket on my living room floor. How did it get to the fourth floor? And now, as I watch the tiny cricket hopping around the bare expanse of my living room, I can't help but sing to myself, "I'm a big, big girl, in a big, big world..."
Monday, August 25, 2008
Beginnings
I arrived at Southwest University expecting… something. It represents the end of my prolonged unemployment; the beginning of the next phase, whatever that may be. And so, at 8:13 PM, I stepped out of the taxi into the dark and the rain. A solitary light lit the entrance and framed Mrs. Niu, who runs the Foreign Experts housing. Except for her initial mutterings of “ta jong wen hai ke yi,” we walked up the four narrow flights of steps in silence and darkness, the sound-activated lights turning on late and dim, really only highlighting the darkness that they briefly interrupted.
It has been a long time since I have ever walked up a flight of stairs without knowing my destination. Mrs. Niu didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask, choosing to savor yet another small mystery. Without knowledge of my destination, the steps seemed as if they could have stretched onto into the darkness forever, and I was content to blithely chase the dark, one step at a time, forever. The lights faced down the stairs, but were rarely triggered until I was right under them, with the effect that I would walk through the dark, and when the lights did turn on, they would illuminate barely more than my heels and the flight of stairs that I had just finished climbing. It seemed appropriate, strangely analogous to my recent history, walking blindly forward, clarity coming only infrequently and retroactively.
We did not climb forever; we only climbed to the fourth floor, into an amazing apartment, with hardwood floors and high ceilings, a double bed, and a fuzzy Bugs Bunny blanket, though I would not find that until later. Mrs. Niu let me into my new home and then she and her husband, Mr. Liu, set about connecting the appliances and turning on the water heater. I was left in the living room, the sparse furnishings only calling attention to my abundance of luggage in the middle of the room. I brought very little, and yet… I have too much crap. With promises to help me with any problems that I might have, they left me standing in the living room – my living room – feeling that I should be feeling more. Some excitement, maybe some fear, wonder, appreciation; even hunger would have at least been something to latch onto. But I just felt… right, maybe even satisfied. Alone, but satisfied.
This past year I have been forced to wring the meaning from every day, because there has been nothing external to do it for me. As opportunities did nothing but dry up, plans did nothing but die, the fertile landscape of my everyday life also dried up and died. There were no 5-year plans to cultivate, not office projects to nurture, and so I found myself in a wasteland with nothing to do but set fire to my expectations and revel in the unexpected, sometimes treacherous, freedom that twisted and curled out of the destruction. There was no slow-and-steady for me, I was either active or I was a lazy, unemployed bum. I think I came to depend on that fire, that burning resolve to keep myself from fading away into insignificance, and I would do it by pure force of personality if necessary.
So it was unsettling for me, so accustomed to fire and passion, to feel… I don’t know. Was it the grind of machinery? The sense that as I moved, something would move in response, that what I did now made a difference? That my next actions would have lasting consequence, if only for a year? And so I unpacked for the future, folding and stacking my clothes in the way that I would want them for the next year. Should the shirts go in a drawer or a shelf? The shelf was unorthodox, but did I really want to bend down every morning? And that was the thing. In the smallest of ways, I was preparing for the future. I have no doubt that a balance will eventually be struck, that the machinery and the fire will alternate and intermingle, enhancing and interrupting each other; they always do. But for now I am content to stand in the stillness, slowly folding and stacking clothes, sure in the knowledge that things are changing.
It has been a long time since I have ever walked up a flight of stairs without knowing my destination. Mrs. Niu didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask, choosing to savor yet another small mystery. Without knowledge of my destination, the steps seemed as if they could have stretched onto into the darkness forever, and I was content to blithely chase the dark, one step at a time, forever. The lights faced down the stairs, but were rarely triggered until I was right under them, with the effect that I would walk through the dark, and when the lights did turn on, they would illuminate barely more than my heels and the flight of stairs that I had just finished climbing. It seemed appropriate, strangely analogous to my recent history, walking blindly forward, clarity coming only infrequently and retroactively.
We did not climb forever; we only climbed to the fourth floor, into an amazing apartment, with hardwood floors and high ceilings, a double bed, and a fuzzy Bugs Bunny blanket, though I would not find that until later. Mrs. Niu let me into my new home and then she and her husband, Mr. Liu, set about connecting the appliances and turning on the water heater. I was left in the living room, the sparse furnishings only calling attention to my abundance of luggage in the middle of the room. I brought very little, and yet… I have too much crap. With promises to help me with any problems that I might have, they left me standing in the living room – my living room – feeling that I should be feeling more. Some excitement, maybe some fear, wonder, appreciation; even hunger would have at least been something to latch onto. But I just felt… right, maybe even satisfied. Alone, but satisfied.
This past year I have been forced to wring the meaning from every day, because there has been nothing external to do it for me. As opportunities did nothing but dry up, plans did nothing but die, the fertile landscape of my everyday life also dried up and died. There were no 5-year plans to cultivate, not office projects to nurture, and so I found myself in a wasteland with nothing to do but set fire to my expectations and revel in the unexpected, sometimes treacherous, freedom that twisted and curled out of the destruction. There was no slow-and-steady for me, I was either active or I was a lazy, unemployed bum. I think I came to depend on that fire, that burning resolve to keep myself from fading away into insignificance, and I would do it by pure force of personality if necessary.
So it was unsettling for me, so accustomed to fire and passion, to feel… I don’t know. Was it the grind of machinery? The sense that as I moved, something would move in response, that what I did now made a difference? That my next actions would have lasting consequence, if only for a year? And so I unpacked for the future, folding and stacking my clothes in the way that I would want them for the next year. Should the shirts go in a drawer or a shelf? The shelf was unorthodox, but did I really want to bend down every morning? And that was the thing. In the smallest of ways, I was preparing for the future. I have no doubt that a balance will eventually be struck, that the machinery and the fire will alternate and intermingle, enhancing and interrupting each other; they always do. But for now I am content to stand in the stillness, slowly folding and stacking clothes, sure in the knowledge that things are changing.
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