It seems that no matter how far I want to run from the uncomfortable aspects of my job, the more glaring they become. Knowledge is a slippery subject. How does one know what they think they know? If you look at beliefs as more than true or false/ black or white, then you run into an entire gradient of beliefs, and it is hard to determine which side of that gradient is the good, and which is the bad.
Absolutists would believe that there is a right and a wrong to everything, while relativists would believe that there can not possibly be a right or a wrong, since any opinion about about morals is inextricably tied to one's culturally specific value system.
Many people pride themselves on being "cosmopolitan." The more one knows about the world, the more globally aware one is. In fact, it is chic to be enamored with foreign cultures and foreign belief systems. One can justify nearly any social or moral shortcoming (in relation to their home society) by appropriating some sort of value (which may or may not exist, and certainly isn't completely understood) from a borrowed culture.
If one wanted to, by looking back at history or at nearly any science of the humanities, one could find cultural justification for nearly anything. The Aztecs sacrificed humans, the Ancient Greeks had a long running tradition of pederasty, prostitution was an industry in feudal Japan, and pimps in Cambodia will tell you that little children would love to do anything that your money can by.
Now, indeed, some of these things would seem quite absurd. But, if one were to take a firm standpoint of true relativism, it would be hard to reject any of these cultural realities as bad.
Yet, most people who do development work, or want to "help" other cultures who are based from an "enlightened" academic position in the West will tell you that most facets of a culture
should be "preserved," while other facets should be developed.
Things that should be developed are education, access to basic resources, such as water, food, fuel, etc., health services, improving / raising women's roles in society, and aiding / giving loans (kiva.com) to small businesses. The average proponent of changing these aspects of society would probably be OK with removing pederasty and sacrifice from them as well.
The problem I confront comes in when academically oriented people allow themselves to exploit an aspect of a culture that either does not exist, or from their own value systems, can not exist as moral.
If one were to be abusing their power position among a weaker, poorer culture in a poor area, what would they do to justify what they were doing? If we take a brief glance, we could look at knowledge / ignorance and justified / unjustified beliefs. If someone of relativist leanings studies a culture and sees that a certain issue of moral question is lacking from it, introducing it to that culture would clearly be morally questionable. If a child is ignorant about a sharp blade, it would be unfair to give that child a sharp blade, because it might cut itself.
If the culture has knowledge and customs surrounding this issue, it would be fair to work within that context.
The problems balloons if there is an existence of a certain issue at a small, perhaps discriminated against, scale. If one wanted to justify their participation in a questionable event, they could convince themselves that a scattering of historical precedents was enough to justify their actions. A sex tourist in Phnom Phen very much wants to believe that what they are doing is actually beneficial to their victims and for the communities. What other work could they do? And in a very perverse mind: Perhaps they enjoy it. One must justify their actions in order to extinguish guilt. If one were to concentrate harder on the inconsistencies in their argument, perhaps they would find that their beliefs were indeed unjustified.
I mentioned that such an abusing individual might be violating the mores of their
"home society." This might seem absurd to bring up, as many people pride themselves in how
different their values systems are from their families or from the "mainstream," but humans are often more rooted then they like to think they are. Preferences for food, for beds, for clothes, and for books and media still strongly permeate most expat communities.
It is doubtful that any person who has embraced another religion or culture system different from that of Western secularism would find beating a child OK. Many people simply use alternative, exotic cultures and others' ignorance about them for their own gain.
Once again though, it is important to remember that most people are not trying to get away with doing something bad. They might fully justify their cursory beliefs in another value system as de facto proof that they are part of something that is fair and fully understood by people other than their accusers. If one wants to believe that everyone else besides them in a Starbucks is a consumerist hack, it is very easy to do so.
A threat of modern anthropology that it has turned exoticization into a science. Still people
and their cultures are being picked apart like biologists do to animals, but now it a fully defendable fortress. To accuse it is to be guilt of cultural insensitivity and to be anti-relativist.
But why do these cultures even interest foreigners? The same sorts of things that interest Western researchers here in Xining are what Chinese tourist companies superficially peddle to their tourists. The NGOs here rely on the fetishization of Tibetan culture in the West to attract donors and aid. People who come to teach here, typically come on similar, if less touristic grounds, to see the real Tibet. And recently, to document it before it "disappears." Despite heavy, anti-exoticization rhetoric, most people here are given in to accepting such self-defeating donations from groups perpetuating these "ignorant" ideas about such areas and their people. Students are taught to despise tourists and modernizers as violators and destroyers of culture. Development projects here largely aim at providing modest work alleviation (such as solar cookers, water pumps, etc.), as they won't harm the pristine traditions of the culture. Student here clearly love there cultures and want to see them endure, but can they think of the motives of the Westerners helping them? Or the consequences to their villages if they continue to accept such gifts from outsiders? In the end the Chinese are ballooning around the Tibetans and beating many of them out of home and work.
The mostly highly educated of our students, on the other hand, become well trained in sociology and literature, and hope to get jobs at NGOs that rely on foreigners to extensively correct their English and find grant opportunities for them. Who is learning Chinese laws to work within the system? So many successful Tibetans in the area are themselves tourists, yet the students won't even consider that work as of now. Many teachers are too afraid to lose their roles and jobs here by admitting that their work is either ineffectual, pointless, or contributing to greater evils. How far will one go to justify their roles in a corrupt system?
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Teaching, Suicide, and Metaphor
Teaching can be a real mind-bender sometimes. I don't consider myself an adept educator by any means, and after three months on the job, I have realized just how insane this job can become!
Each of my classes is remarkably different. I teach a total of 4 different classes of children: quick-learning Tibetans from all over ethnographic Tibet, inattentive farmer kids from Qinghai, attentive farmer kids from Sichuan and Chongqing, and insolent adult students from various nearby townships.
Every week is full of surprises. Early on in the semester I was a pretty strict teacher and strict grader. I was constantly swirling around, barking at loud-mouthed kids to shut up if they were going to speak Chinese and splattering their papers with red ink proclaiming "plagiarism" and "0." This was quite early on for such cruelty, but I was afraid that the students would fall out of line; they would notice what an unsure and inept teacher I was and rebel against me. And of course, I was (and am) a terrible opponent of Chinese pedagogy - lecturing and silence, complete servitude to the laws uncritical text memorization.
When I pushed too hard, the female students in my Qinghai Chinese class produced on a number of occasions some disturbing poetry. "I am sad like the rain; I want to die." I forgot how the poems go exactly, but they were all more or less along these lines. I recognized a growing problem, and figured that my ruthless pursuits of personification and metaphor probably weren't helpful at all. They would painfully writhe in their seats as I would hover over and deter them from the most mundane of starting lines: "The sky is so blue; the flowers are beautiful like baby."
No, no! Too easy to rime that first line with something as equally vacant (an indeed unrhyming) , and what kind of a metaphor is a comparison between a flower and a baby! Hell, that isn't even a metaphor!
Their lines would shift under my scrutinizing gaze. I , the sweatshop foreman, punishing my workers for misprinting with brushes they couldn't even hold, prowling the grounds looking for the weakest links, and outing their foolish mistakes. The weaker girls started to panic, and their poetry got more and more morbid: "My quite face turned blue; the flowers are dead too; Oh, you - teacher, are so cruel!"
This week I assigned an essay to my students. The assignment was to write a persuasive essay. The example I gave them was of some sad soul trying to promote plastic windows over glass ones. "Glass windows are so expensive, and they break easily! Plastic windows, on the other hand are both cheap and durable!" The students got a kick out of the example, but as soon as
I gave them the assignment to come up with their own idea - things got messy.
One girl, lets call her Cathy (for all I know, that might actually be her English name, what a great teacher I am!), wrote her paper proposition as follows:
Topic: The changes in myself.
Thesis: I have noticed a lot of changes in myself in the last few months.
1. I don't want to get up in the morning, I get up very late.
2. I will not go to eat by myself.
3. I miss my home and parents very much.
...
WHOAH! Danger, Danger! "Uh," I said, "that's actually not a persuasive arguement. Can you really convince someone else about the changes in yourself? You have to choose a topic that people would argue with you over, that they might a different opinion on." Awkward pause - Cathy was staring into her desk very hard. A crushing silence enveloped that corner of the classroom. "Well, you know, a lot of people feel different in the Winter. They don't like to go out so much. You could write about how people change in the Winter. Many people feel the same way." Sidestep out. That was intense, and I felt a little dirty.
Many of the children in these classes act as 20-something year old preteens. They giggle, yell, and refuse to do work. It reminds me of middle school in the US! But, in actuality, these kids are adults, in their third year of college. They are dealing with some realistic and intense issues, a large one of which is that they are far from home for the first time, and that their absence puts a stress on them and their family. Add that to the pressure that they have from that very same family, and then add on regular school pressures - and you have students who grow their English writing skills through goth poetry.
Each of my classes is remarkably different. I teach a total of 4 different classes of children: quick-learning Tibetans from all over ethnographic Tibet, inattentive farmer kids from Qinghai, attentive farmer kids from Sichuan and Chongqing, and insolent adult students from various nearby townships.
Every week is full of surprises. Early on in the semester I was a pretty strict teacher and strict grader. I was constantly swirling around, barking at loud-mouthed kids to shut up if they were going to speak Chinese and splattering their papers with red ink proclaiming "plagiarism" and "0." This was quite early on for such cruelty, but I was afraid that the students would fall out of line; they would notice what an unsure and inept teacher I was and rebel against me. And of course, I was (and am) a terrible opponent of Chinese pedagogy - lecturing and silence, complete servitude to the laws uncritical text memorization.
When I pushed too hard, the female students in my Qinghai Chinese class produced on a number of occasions some disturbing poetry. "I am sad like the rain; I want to die." I forgot how the poems go exactly, but they were all more or less along these lines. I recognized a growing problem, and figured that my ruthless pursuits of personification and metaphor probably weren't helpful at all. They would painfully writhe in their seats as I would hover over and deter them from the most mundane of starting lines: "The sky is so blue; the flowers are beautiful like baby."
No, no! Too easy to rime that first line with something as equally vacant (an indeed unrhyming) , and what kind of a metaphor is a comparison between a flower and a baby! Hell, that isn't even a metaphor!
Their lines would shift under my scrutinizing gaze. I , the sweatshop foreman, punishing my workers for misprinting with brushes they couldn't even hold, prowling the grounds looking for the weakest links, and outing their foolish mistakes. The weaker girls started to panic, and their poetry got more and more morbid: "My quite face turned blue; the flowers are dead too; Oh, you - teacher, are so cruel!"
This week I assigned an essay to my students. The assignment was to write a persuasive essay. The example I gave them was of some sad soul trying to promote plastic windows over glass ones. "Glass windows are so expensive, and they break easily! Plastic windows, on the other hand are both cheap and durable!" The students got a kick out of the example, but as soon as
I gave them the assignment to come up with their own idea - things got messy.
One girl, lets call her Cathy (for all I know, that might actually be her English name, what a great teacher I am!), wrote her paper proposition as follows:
Topic: The changes in myself.
Thesis: I have noticed a lot of changes in myself in the last few months.
1. I don't want to get up in the morning, I get up very late.
2. I will not go to eat by myself.
3. I miss my home and parents very much.
...
WHOAH! Danger, Danger! "Uh," I said, "that's actually not a persuasive arguement. Can you really convince someone else about the changes in yourself? You have to choose a topic that people would argue with you over, that they might a different opinion on." Awkward pause - Cathy was staring into her desk very hard. A crushing silence enveloped that corner of the classroom. "Well, you know, a lot of people feel different in the Winter. They don't like to go out so much. You could write about how people change in the Winter. Many people feel the same way." Sidestep out. That was intense, and I felt a little dirty.
Many of the children in these classes act as 20-something year old preteens. They giggle, yell, and refuse to do work. It reminds me of middle school in the US! But, in actuality, these kids are adults, in their third year of college. They are dealing with some realistic and intense issues, a large one of which is that they are far from home for the first time, and that their absence puts a stress on them and their family. Add that to the pressure that they have from that very same family, and then add on regular school pressures - and you have students who grow their English writing skills through goth poetry.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Oh, yes, my blog
Dear Journal,
I have a lot of catching up to do. Its been a long and tumultuous ride this past month, and its all wound up right here, with today, and the following INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE:
Ligaya and I swung by early, just after my 10:20 ending of class and subsequent baozi run came to an end. We swung by the office of our employers - Mr. Yu and Ms. Wang. Yu seemed to be wiping tables with a dirty rag when we walked in. Ligaya called him out on this rather uncharacteristic action, and he sheepishly recoiled at the suggestion. We sat down and he prodded us about the post exchange. Ms. Wang arrived a few minutes later, in a bustle as always, knocking around documents and fumbling with the office's various dial-able objects.
They joked with us and we joked with them. It was a disarmingly cheerful environment.
What the hell was going on? Where was the pretense of botched classes, complaining students, angry landlords, or the suggestive rhetoric for self-correction?
Found it, the pretense had been gobbled up by a request to humor a media tool for an interview. An interview on the "future of Qinghai Province." Wang paid us our monthly salary and spend an extended period of time searching for the english word for "weizhi" a term which expresses when one pays someone before the payer goes to the bank for the withdraw of the money, with connotations of paying someone slightly ahead of their regularly scheduled payment time. The closest term decided upon was "prepay."
After being prepayed, I went home and graded 3 papers out of a stack of 30, and drank a pot of coffee.
I arrived back at the office building an hour later. I was joined by Josh, a pink-clothed American studying Chinese, Tibetan, and TCM (with connections to an unclosed US agency), and Abe Sensai, the resident Japanese teacher. We were now informed to inform the reporter about our impressions of change and development of the province in the wake of the recently ended People's Congress in Beijing. I assumed that a whole lot of nothing happened there (in public) and so this would just be a chance to sucker us into complementing Xining, Qinghai, and therefore China. Mr. Ao, another school official, told me that now that China had freedom, issues could be discussed. In the past, he told me, when teachers had issues, they came to this office, and the issues were taken care of. This office, I realized, was a miniature version of the Chinese government, and it itself expressed all of the great things that modern China was capable of! This truly was a multi-scaled harmonious landscape!
Five minutes later the other foreigners and I were trapped in a room somewhere between an interrogation chamber and a sleazy motel room with a young Beijing girl nervously shaking a digital recorder. We were to be interviewed for China Radio Int'l (CRI)!!
Moments later I was complementing Xining, Qinghai, and therefore China. I stressed the convenience of my university life and the good traffic of the city. I had the mic on me twice, but every-time my soliloquy went astray, I lost her attention and CRI's recorder. The first misstep was a brief diatribe against the dearth of helmet wearers in China and the absence of public education about the dangers of head injuries. "There must be a law-" I was saying. The second misstep was when I mentioned the shamefully low English levels of most of my students, which I said was a geographic problem resulting from lack of lower education funding in more remote provinces. "My students can hardly speak a sentence of English-" Yoink!
Abe droned on twice to her about the dangers and deplorability of the hormones and pesticides used to increase food yields in China. He did this in both Chinese and Japanese. The young lady gave an empty smile as Abe drew over his body with his hands the negative influence of contaminated meats. The hormones mainly affect the human lungs in sort of a pumping action, apparently. A negative pumping action.
After the interviewing was done we were all released. Josh discovered our little CRI representative had studied Burmese in Beijing, a fact which prompted him to get her phone number. She motioned him with a thumb-pinky phone and mouthed as we departed. "I've always wanted to learn Burmese," Josh said. Abe dottered about a bit and ran on ahead. Some fuwuyuans were doing exercises in a parking lot, a Christmas song blurted out of a garbage truck somewhere in the distance, black smoke bellowed out of an inconspicuous smokestack poking above a sign about preserving the "Green Homeland." Another morning in China.
I have a lot of catching up to do. Its been a long and tumultuous ride this past month, and its all wound up right here, with today, and the following INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE:
Ligaya and I swung by early, just after my 10:20 ending of class and subsequent baozi run came to an end. We swung by the office of our employers - Mr. Yu and Ms. Wang. Yu seemed to be wiping tables with a dirty rag when we walked in. Ligaya called him out on this rather uncharacteristic action, and he sheepishly recoiled at the suggestion. We sat down and he prodded us about the post exchange. Ms. Wang arrived a few minutes later, in a bustle as always, knocking around documents and fumbling with the office's various dial-able objects.
They joked with us and we joked with them. It was a disarmingly cheerful environment.
What the hell was going on? Where was the pretense of botched classes, complaining students, angry landlords, or the suggestive rhetoric for self-correction?
Found it, the pretense had been gobbled up by a request to humor a media tool for an interview. An interview on the "future of Qinghai Province." Wang paid us our monthly salary and spend an extended period of time searching for the english word for "weizhi" a term which expresses when one pays someone before the payer goes to the bank for the withdraw of the money, with connotations of paying someone slightly ahead of their regularly scheduled payment time. The closest term decided upon was "prepay."
After being prepayed, I went home and graded 3 papers out of a stack of 30, and drank a pot of coffee.
I arrived back at the office building an hour later. I was joined by Josh, a pink-clothed American studying Chinese, Tibetan, and TCM (with connections to an unclosed US agency), and Abe Sensai, the resident Japanese teacher. We were now informed to inform the reporter about our impressions of change and development of the province in the wake of the recently ended People's Congress in Beijing. I assumed that a whole lot of nothing happened there (in public) and so this would just be a chance to sucker us into complementing Xining, Qinghai, and therefore China. Mr. Ao, another school official, told me that now that China had freedom, issues could be discussed. In the past, he told me, when teachers had issues, they came to this office, and the issues were taken care of. This office, I realized, was a miniature version of the Chinese government, and it itself expressed all of the great things that modern China was capable of! This truly was a multi-scaled harmonious landscape!
Five minutes later the other foreigners and I were trapped in a room somewhere between an interrogation chamber and a sleazy motel room with a young Beijing girl nervously shaking a digital recorder. We were to be interviewed for China Radio Int'l (CRI)!!
Moments later I was complementing Xining, Qinghai, and therefore China. I stressed the convenience of my university life and the good traffic of the city. I had the mic on me twice, but every-time my soliloquy went astray, I lost her attention and CRI's recorder. The first misstep was a brief diatribe against the dearth of helmet wearers in China and the absence of public education about the dangers of head injuries. "There must be a law-" I was saying. The second misstep was when I mentioned the shamefully low English levels of most of my students, which I said was a geographic problem resulting from lack of lower education funding in more remote provinces. "My students can hardly speak a sentence of English-" Yoink!
Abe droned on twice to her about the dangers and deplorability of the hormones and pesticides used to increase food yields in China. He did this in both Chinese and Japanese. The young lady gave an empty smile as Abe drew over his body with his hands the negative influence of contaminated meats. The hormones mainly affect the human lungs in sort of a pumping action, apparently. A negative pumping action.
After the interviewing was done we were all released. Josh discovered our little CRI representative had studied Burmese in Beijing, a fact which prompted him to get her phone number. She motioned him with a thumb-pinky phone and mouthed
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Where am I?
I'm in a grassland. I'm in a city. One minute I'm surrounded by white capped Muslims, the next I'm up to my gills with American Christian missionaries. I'm in a market selling monks' robes and horse saddles. I'm in a giant shopping mall eyeing overpriced counterfeit khakis.
I'm with a Tibetan. I'm with a Han. I'm with an American.
They all operate in independant spheres, showing indifference to one another.
Smiles are indignant or do not occur at all.
None of the Chinese students want to be here. For them this is a third rate college in a third rate city. Their writings tell of the anxiety of reaching Xining, their anger and frustration at first seeing the "dusty, yellow mountains" as bear as "a monk's head." Why have they been banished to this end of the earth, this border town in a province once only seen as a prison cell on the government's maps.
The Tibetans want to go home, or they want to go somewhere else. It is but a period of fun and freedom before they end up doing all sorts of things - or doing nothing at all. The rate of success for graduates of Qinghai Shida is not to be envied. Most students will go home to their villages to teach English, a few will work with NGOs or non-profits, and a pinch will go on to study in the Philippines, or (with some sort of God's good grace) in the US.
Is the simple life a better life? So many of my students in all my classes are either from farming communities or from nomadic families. The Americans preach a good "simple life" and tout their babies, cookies, and pasta as a carving out of the simple and the pure.
They come from a privileged position, the students from hardly any position at all.
Yet they all agree that the family is to be missed and they all agree that life can be very difficult and very sad.
So maybe Xining is actually united by qualities of longing. Longing for the simple, for family, and for change. Be it change of scene, or change in others' religions, change is in the air. Its a change that is being inspired by people's desires to create the better and from their frustrations with the status quo in their uncomfortable new homes. Perhaps the largest difference is just what they gave up to experience this discomfort. Many Tibetans gave up a hard and abusive life. Many Han gave up a generational pattern of farming. Many Americans gave up all of their creature comforts to come live in a place so foreign and so challenging to their ideas of the mundane. Does this make the Americans more brave? For they were the ones who gave up the best to pursue the less desireable. However, the safety net of a land far away lies with them, not with the citizens of China. For many of the students, if they fail at this college, they may never have another opportunity for a college education again. They may end up as taxi drivers, waitresses, low ranking government officials, or as owners of convenience stores, selling cigarettes and pumpkins seeds late into the night.
Xining is a place which defines discomfort. It is a place that calls for bravery. It is a place that strives for the sea but remains, firmly, rooted deep within the mountains, rivers, fields, deserts, valleys, and wastelands of China. Far from its sea.
I'm with a Tibetan. I'm with a Han. I'm with an American.
They all operate in independant spheres, showing indifference to one another.
Smiles are indignant or do not occur at all.
None of the Chinese students want to be here. For them this is a third rate college in a third rate city. Their writings tell of the anxiety of reaching Xining, their anger and frustration at first seeing the "dusty, yellow mountains" as bear as "a monk's head." Why have they been banished to this end of the earth, this border town in a province once only seen as a prison cell on the government's maps.
The Tibetans want to go home, or they want to go somewhere else. It is but a period of fun and freedom before they end up doing all sorts of things - or doing nothing at all. The rate of success for graduates of Qinghai Shida is not to be envied. Most students will go home to their villages to teach English, a few will work with NGOs or non-profits, and a pinch will go on to study in the Philippines, or (with some sort of God's good grace) in the US.
Is the simple life a better life? So many of my students in all my classes are either from farming communities or from nomadic families. The Americans preach a good "simple life" and tout their babies, cookies, and pasta as a carving out of the simple and the pure.
They come from a privileged position, the students from hardly any position at all.
Yet they all agree that the family is to be missed and they all agree that life can be very difficult and very sad.
So maybe Xining is actually united by qualities of longing. Longing for the simple, for family, and for change. Be it change of scene, or change in others' religions, change is in the air. Its a change that is being inspired by people's desires to create the better and from their frustrations with the status quo in their uncomfortable new homes. Perhaps the largest difference is just what they gave up to experience this discomfort. Many Tibetans gave up a hard and abusive life. Many Han gave up a generational pattern of farming. Many Americans gave up all of their creature comforts to come live in a place so foreign and so challenging to their ideas of the mundane. Does this make the Americans more brave? For they were the ones who gave up the best to pursue the less desireable. However, the safety net of a land far away lies with them, not with the citizens of China. For many of the students, if they fail at this college, they may never have another opportunity for a college education again. They may end up as taxi drivers, waitresses, low ranking government officials, or as owners of convenience stores, selling cigarettes and pumpkins seeds late into the night.
Xining is a place which defines discomfort. It is a place that calls for bravery. It is a place that strives for the sea but remains, firmly, rooted deep within the mountains, rivers, fields, deserts, valleys, and wastelands of China. Far from its sea.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Settling In
Seems to involve mostly drinking. Just my luck I end up back in a terrible drinking culture.
Baijiu, pijiu, putaojiu, it follows me wherever I go. There are some HARD drinkers here, HARD and full of STAMINA!
I have realized just why they gave Ligaya and I all of the writing classes = fat stacks of boring and mundane writing about techan and the four seasons. Its A LOT of work if you have any desire to actually correct the grammar.
The geography class and writing class are a lot of fun, though. Geography means I can make my own curriculum, and the students are very respectful, and literature means I can fully lecture them (trust me, deviation from this model is NOT a good idea) just like when I was a freshman at UW. So I get to resort to the resources of the world wide web to dig up historical and cultural goodies. It's actually a good educational experience.
Also,
www.imagingtibet.org
will, with any luck, soon display the images of the promising youths of the plateau. Elena, and Australian ETP teacher, runs the program and has been lending them cameras and film and asking them to take photos of the aesthetically pleasing or of the ethnographically relevant.
I get to the web-designer and web-teacher, and can hopefully aid the students with photography as well. Unfortunately, I feel that perhaps my knowledge is a bit too technical. If they are using point and shoots or disposables, maybe I can aid them a bit by teaching composition. Rule of thirds! Too busy!! Ugly person!!!! Contrast issues!!! The images I saw were a mixed bag, with some serious finger-over-the-lens issues, but the students with the high-end digital cameras and film SLRs had some nice work.
What else?
I lost my iPod after a night on the town... am getting out of town tomorrow! YEAHH!
Baijiu, pijiu, putaojiu, it follows me wherever I go. There are some HARD drinkers here, HARD and full of STAMINA!
I have realized just why they gave Ligaya and I all of the writing classes = fat stacks of boring and mundane writing about techan and the four seasons. Its A LOT of work if you have any desire to actually correct the grammar.
The geography class and writing class are a lot of fun, though. Geography means I can make my own curriculum, and the students are very respectful, and literature means I can fully lecture them (trust me, deviation from this model is NOT a good idea) just like when I was a freshman at UW. So I get to resort to the resources of the world wide web to dig up historical and cultural goodies. It's actually a good educational experience.
Also,
www.imagingtibet.org
will, with any luck, soon display the images of the promising youths of the plateau. Elena, and Australian ETP teacher, runs the program and has been lending them cameras and film and asking them to take photos of the aesthetically pleasing or of the ethnographically relevant.
I get to the web-designer and web-teacher, and can hopefully aid the students with photography as well. Unfortunately, I feel that perhaps my knowledge is a bit too technical. If they are using point and shoots or disposables, maybe I can aid them a bit by teaching composition. Rule of thirds! Too busy!! Ugly person!!!! Contrast issues!!! The images I saw were a mixed bag, with some serious finger-over-the-lens issues, but the students with the high-end digital cameras and film SLRs had some nice work.
What else?
I lost my iPod after a night on the town... am getting out of town tomorrow! YEAHH!
Sunday, September 2, 2007
The University Army
I first showed up at the running track at 3:30 pm. I had come for a jog, but was immediately shocked to find hundreds of soldiers on the running field. Every summer large numbers of students become soldiers for a few months. They put on generic green soldiers’ fatigues and bum around on campus sports fields day in and day out.
It is quite the sight to behold, all of these green ants basking under the sun, surrounded by a drab concrete stadium with an inner wall painted to depict massive red and yellow tulips. I sat down and took it all in. Three troops in plastic riot gear helmet were the focus of the exercise. Marching back and forth across the field with a flag, they resembled a high school color guard.
The leader of the young army was a balding Chinese man with a ferocious face. He also happened to be the technical expert for this regiment and in between barking orders at the three tormented students, he switched around the CDs of the generic military music that blared from speakers placed all over the field.
Most of the students had been placed in little battalions that would haphazardly march around the field. When they stood at attention they looked like cub scouts mimicking an army, everyone out of line and half the kids pushing each other or hesitating to stand up. The marching was undeniably ridiculous. I thought of the made-for-TV movies I often saw bits of on CCTV. A small group of Chinese soldiers is running from an imposing Japanese or Kuomintang patrol, they bumble around frantically, throwing stones at opportune times or make semi-comical attempts to hide behind bushes or overturned canoes. A whole army of children being prepared to be unprepared.
In sneakers and old boots the kids moved up and down the running track in staggered lines, feigning a disciplined step and stifling smiles. A few of the columns of girls that passed me were visibly embarrassed at being spotted by a confused laowai gawking at their silly exercises.
A crowd of other students with soccer balls waited at the side of the field, biding their time until the soldiers left so that they could take over the inner green to play soccer. I asked what time the exercises would finish. This was to be the final day of exercises, one of them told me, and they should be done by four or five in the afternoon, if not sooner.
In the back of the field some students broke rank and chased each other down the track. No one seemed to care. How long could this honestly go on for?
At 5 p.m. I came back and found the field pretty much the same. The plain-clothed leader was still fumbling with counterfeit march CDs and yelling at the color-guard through his microphone. The flag-bearing threesome were visibly distressed at this point, wondering what they had to deserve the worst job in the university military. The soccer players had lost their patience and were now playing in one corner of the field, their balls occasionally hitting the troops sitting along the track.
Of the hundreds of students laying wait in giant seated squares on the track, one or two groups would occasionally stand up and kick their legs up and down. Seldom a group would march a little, and upon colliding with the always-mobile color-guard, would clumsily return back to position. The other squads remained leaderless and directionless, and sat sweating under the hot sun, throwing empty water bottles at each other and engaging in other schoolyard shenanigans. I was expecting the fearless combed-over leader to call order and reprimand his farcical army, but instead he was scolding the flag-bearer for not swinging his left arm with enough gusto. Some kids ran into the field and mock goose-stepped with a pitiful mass of soldiers. No one seemed to notice the distraction. I decided to come back later.
The next day I came back to see if the troops were still there. Perhaps they had to practice a camp-out maneuver and where still there, sneaking up on each other tents and scratching them with their fake guns in an attempt to scare the girl soldiers. No such luck. Instead I found the summer-end graduation ceremony coming to a close. The ranks were still in tatters and some of the soldiers were posing for photographs and crying. Their parents descended onto the fields to whisk them away. The army was on leave for another ten months.
It is quite the sight to behold, all of these green ants basking under the sun, surrounded by a drab concrete stadium with an inner wall painted to depict massive red and yellow tulips. I sat down and took it all in. Three troops in plastic riot gear helmet were the focus of the exercise. Marching back and forth across the field with a flag, they resembled a high school color guard.
The leader of the young army was a balding Chinese man with a ferocious face. He also happened to be the technical expert for this regiment and in between barking orders at the three tormented students, he switched around the CDs of the generic military music that blared from speakers placed all over the field.
Most of the students had been placed in little battalions that would haphazardly march around the field. When they stood at attention they looked like cub scouts mimicking an army, everyone out of line and half the kids pushing each other or hesitating to stand up. The marching was undeniably ridiculous. I thought of the made-for-TV movies I often saw bits of on CCTV. A small group of Chinese soldiers is running from an imposing Japanese or Kuomintang patrol, they bumble around frantically, throwing stones at opportune times or make semi-comical attempts to hide behind bushes or overturned canoes. A whole army of children being prepared to be unprepared.
In sneakers and old boots the kids moved up and down the running track in staggered lines, feigning a disciplined step and stifling smiles. A few of the columns of girls that passed me were visibly embarrassed at being spotted by a confused laowai gawking at their silly exercises.
A crowd of other students with soccer balls waited at the side of the field, biding their time until the soldiers left so that they could take over the inner green to play soccer. I asked what time the exercises would finish. This was to be the final day of exercises, one of them told me, and they should be done by four or five in the afternoon, if not sooner.
In the back of the field some students broke rank and chased each other down the track. No one seemed to care. How long could this honestly go on for?
At 5 p.m. I came back and found the field pretty much the same. The plain-clothed leader was still fumbling with counterfeit march CDs and yelling at the color-guard through his microphone. The flag-bearing threesome were visibly distressed at this point, wondering what they had to deserve the worst job in the university military. The soccer players had lost their patience and were now playing in one corner of the field, their balls occasionally hitting the troops sitting along the track.
Of the hundreds of students laying wait in giant seated squares on the track, one or two groups would occasionally stand up and kick their legs up and down. Seldom a group would march a little, and upon colliding with the always-mobile color-guard, would clumsily return back to position. The other squads remained leaderless and directionless, and sat sweating under the hot sun, throwing empty water bottles at each other and engaging in other schoolyard shenanigans. I was expecting the fearless combed-over leader to call order and reprimand his farcical army, but instead he was scolding the flag-bearer for not swinging his left arm with enough gusto. Some kids ran into the field and mock goose-stepped with a pitiful mass of soldiers. No one seemed to notice the distraction. I decided to come back later.
The next day I came back to see if the troops were still there. Perhaps they had to practice a camp-out maneuver and where still there, sneaking up on each other tents and scratching them with their fake guns in an attempt to scare the girl soldiers. No such luck. Instead I found the summer-end graduation ceremony coming to a close. The ranks were still in tatters and some of the soldiers were posing for photographs and crying. Their parents descended onto the fields to whisk them away. The army was on leave for another ten months.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Finally in Xining
It been a very tumultuous week that we've spent in Xining. It would take to long to write about, so I will share some highlights:
1. Drinking and Yak's tongue. The beer in this city is very warm. Some Tibetan cuisine consists of cold yak tongue and rough cuts of mutton that are more or less fat. It was a rude awakening to be treated to a meal of these two and the warm beer on my second day in town.
2. Cleaning my filth-hole. Ligaya and I have spent a lot of time cleaning out the putrid dirt trap that is my apartment. The last volunteer (I won't name names) felt that to any sort of cleaning for two years or to clean up after herself when moving out was too much work. Everything in the apartment was caked in a half-inch of dust and/or cooking oil. The curtains were nearly black, the walls smudgeable, and the dishes filled with dried food offerings. I threw out so much trash (which was promptly intercepted and taken by Chinese trash-diggers when I took it to the street), and there is much much more. I still have several frightening bras to dispose of.
3. Other foreigners. The foreigners here seem to be in three major groups: a) The tourists and the transient. Not so many of these people, they supposedly clear out when the winter comes. b) Missionary folk. There are very young families all over the city. The adults are shy of 30 and the children all very very young. As its illegal to do their work here, the missionaries are language students or language teachers de jure and convert heathens de facto. I still have not talked to any of the missionaries, but am sure to next week, as they are my teaching buddies! c) ETP people. We've hung out with these dudes a lot, a lot of fun, a lot of passion. They teach for the Tibetan teaching program, and I will be working with them as well, as I will also be an ETP teacher. I get the feeling that they don't hang out with the missionaries very often. Doing cultural preservation work is no doubt somewhat at odds with proselytizing.
That's all for now, teaching starts in only 2 days! Lord help me!
1. Drinking and Yak's tongue. The beer in this city is very warm. Some Tibetan cuisine consists of cold yak tongue and rough cuts of mutton that are more or less fat. It was a rude awakening to be treated to a meal of these two and the warm beer on my second day in town.
2. Cleaning my filth-hole. Ligaya and I have spent a lot of time cleaning out the putrid dirt trap that is my apartment. The last volunteer (I won't name names) felt that to any sort of cleaning for two years or to clean up after herself when moving out was too much work. Everything in the apartment was caked in a half-inch of dust and/or cooking oil. The curtains were nearly black, the walls smudgeable, and the dishes filled with dried food offerings. I threw out so much trash (which was promptly intercepted and taken by Chinese trash-diggers when I took it to the street), and there is much much more. I still have several frightening bras to dispose of.
3. Other foreigners. The foreigners here seem to be in three major groups: a) The tourists and the transient. Not so many of these people, they supposedly clear out when the winter comes. b) Missionary folk. There are very young families all over the city. The adults are shy of 30 and the children all very very young. As its illegal to do their work here, the missionaries are language students or language teachers de jure and convert heathens de facto. I still have not talked to any of the missionaries, but am sure to next week, as they are my teaching buddies! c) ETP people. We've hung out with these dudes a lot, a lot of fun, a lot of passion. They teach for the Tibetan teaching program, and I will be working with them as well, as I will also be an ETP teacher. I get the feeling that they don't hang out with the missionaries very often. Doing cultural preservation work is no doubt somewhat at odds with proselytizing.
That's all for now, teaching starts in only 2 days! Lord help me!
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Wondering about the power grab.
It has been pointed out to me on a number of occasions that Chinese males seem to be big purveyors of the "power grab," seizing their female companions by their arm at a the elbow. As you can imagine, being held at this point is both annoying and affects one's mobility.
On the way to this computer lab I witnessed two men practice not only a power grab but also force their companions to a wall or fence in a very quiet but intense power struggle. The men would be firm and forceful and the girls resistant but ultimately giving up with a forced smile.
And so I thought: What sort of domestic abuse issues plague China?
A China daily article reports that 30% of families (80 million) have reported domestic violence, and that 100,000 divorces a year stem from this issue.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-08/02/content_5447324.htm
Current laws stress equality in marriage and at home and strictly prohibit things such forcing one into prostitution or to commit infanticide upon newborn girls, but seem to step around dealing with domestic violence.
http://www.women.org.cn/english/english/laws/02.htm
Despite being legally and rhetorically equal in Chinese society, women hold less cadre and university positions than men, make up only 41% of the university enrollment, and are much more likely to be illiterate:
http://www.women.org.cn/english/english/fact/mulu.htm
Percent(%) Illiterate - 1999
Total 15
Male 9
Female 22
From another recent article:
"In Shenzhen, South China, 26 people have died resulting from domestic abuse in the first half of this year -- 13 percent of deaths -- occurring in all criminal cases.
In the past two years, the federation has received about 50,000 complaints of domestic violence, up 70 percent, the deputy chairman of the federation, Mo Wenxiu, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency."
http://www.newsgd.com/news/China1/200503050029.htm
It's so easy to be a visitor here and not see this as an issue at all. The subtleness of the little battles so common on the streets here are almost imperceptable to the untrained eye. Yet like many things in China, the serious non-cutsy halfs of most things that are discussed or acted out upon go on behind closed doors.
On the way to this computer lab I witnessed two men practice not only a power grab but also force their companions to a wall or fence in a very quiet but intense power struggle. The men would be firm and forceful and the girls resistant but ultimately giving up with a forced smile.
And so I thought: What sort of domestic abuse issues plague China?
A China daily article reports that 30% of families (80 million) have reported domestic violence, and that 100,000 divorces a year stem from this issue.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-08/02/content_5447324.htm
Current laws stress equality in marriage and at home and strictly prohibit things such forcing one into prostitution or to commit infanticide upon newborn girls, but seem to step around dealing with domestic violence.
http://www.women.org.cn/english/english/laws/02.htm
Despite being legally and rhetorically equal in Chinese society, women hold less cadre and university positions than men, make up only 41% of the university enrollment, and are much more likely to be illiterate:
http://www.women.org.cn/english/english/fact/mulu.htm
Percent(%) Illiterate - 1999
Total 15
Male 9
Female 22
From another recent article:
"In Shenzhen, South China, 26 people have died resulting from domestic abuse in the first half of this year -- 13 percent of deaths -- occurring in all criminal cases.
In the past two years, the federation has received about 50,000 complaints of domestic violence, up 70 percent, the deputy chairman of the federation, Mo Wenxiu, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency."
http://www.newsgd.com/news/China1/200503050029.htm
It's so easy to be a visitor here and not see this as an issue at all. The subtleness of the little battles so common on the streets here are almost imperceptable to the untrained eye. Yet like many things in China, the serious non-cutsy halfs of most things that are discussed or acted out upon go on behind closed doors.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
China
We're in China. It's so nice here. Despite record hot temperatures in Nanjing and Shanghai, I have been impressed by the lightness of the fetid tan cloud that usually occupies the skies of China's industrial coast.
Anyway, we are living in a very tall highrise on the campus of Nanjing Shifan Daxue (Normal College) and yesterday Will succeeded in getting his ass locked on top of it! There is an elevator and roof access door that he made the mistake of entering too late at night in search of a wireless connection. Luckily and ironically, Will is the only one with a cellphone in our group and a plea for help made it too the staff at the hotel. On a side note, Will DID in fact find a wireless signal, albeit a weak one.
My Chinese is coming back to me...very slowly. We are in classes at the University and have been since hearing a blistering introduction speech Tuesday morning. I guess this college, like so many others in China, is in the top 50 of all Chinese universities. After proclaiming this to an audience that understood 10% of his talk, the orator disappeared and we were whisked into classes. After a brief interview I was placed in a class with 4 other students who had just started learning Chinese 3 weeks before. A few Korean girls in the back struggled with Chinese numbers and the teacher spoke to us in English. All of those credits at UW in vain!
The next class was a little better and I have know realized that I fill have to relearn nearly all the characters, which I have nearly completely forgotten. At least it gives me a fresh start with my poor pronunciation as well.
News from Xining. I will be teaching grammar and ********Geography! as well as English at QNU. What joy!! A little over 2 weeks until Ligaya and I arrive.
Anyway, we are living in a very tall highrise on the campus of Nanjing Shifan Daxue (Normal College) and yesterday Will succeeded in getting his ass locked on top of it! There is an elevator and roof access door that he made the mistake of entering too late at night in search of a wireless connection. Luckily and ironically, Will is the only one with a cellphone in our group and a plea for help made it too the staff at the hotel. On a side note, Will DID in fact find a wireless signal, albeit a weak one.
My Chinese is coming back to me...very slowly. We are in classes at the University and have been since hearing a blistering introduction speech Tuesday morning. I guess this college, like so many others in China, is in the top 50 of all Chinese universities. After proclaiming this to an audience that understood 10% of his talk, the orator disappeared and we were whisked into classes. After a brief interview I was placed in a class with 4 other students who had just started learning Chinese 3 weeks before. A few Korean girls in the back struggled with Chinese numbers and the teacher spoke to us in English. All of those credits at UW in vain!
The next class was a little better and I have know realized that I fill have to relearn nearly all the characters, which I have nearly completely forgotten. At least it gives me a fresh start with my poor pronunciation as well.
News from Xining. I will be teaching grammar and ********Geography! as well as English at QNU. What joy!! A little over 2 weeks until Ligaya and I arrive.
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