Getting Settled in the City of Perpetual Gloom
20 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Teaching Tags: China City Living, markets, shopping
A green-eyed monster was here. I knew it when another foreign teacher complimented Sarah, a post-doc student assigned to help me transition to life in one of China’s largest cities, the City of Perpetual Gloom. To me, the green-eyed monster was a minotaur which shook its head furiously and threw its horns to either side. They were big horns too. The kind that would pierce, rip, and crush if they ever connected with your heart.
“Wow, your English is very good,” the other teacher said. Ingratiation oozed from his pores.
He was one of those nice guys. He reminded me of myself, actually. Maybe that’s why I wanted to smack his bitch ass up. Yes, welcome to China. There are people here who speak English as a second language better than those who call it their first and only language.
Now that I was back in China I was reminded of harsh climate. At first I thought the bone white sky would get to me. I felt like an alien crash-landed on a strange world. I told myself to be thankful the place had more visibility than Yoda’s swamp planet, Dagobah. There was drizzle that made the sidewalks slippery from a mélange of dried cooking oil, mold, phlegm, and the undifferentiated effluent of this country’s Industrial Revolution.
A Portrait of the Teacher by a Young Student
14 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Teaching Tags: Classes, Obama, Students
A student from my underground literature class wrote an article about her experience with my teaching method. I had been helping the student develop her writing skills so that she could perform well on the GREs as her dream is to go to graduate school on edge of the prairie in Garrison Keillor Country — a place I had fond memories of from a journey I took in a former life. What follows is an article she wrote about my class for a Minneapolis/St. Paul based e-zine called China Insight.
In the article, she recalls the first day I introduced myself to the class. Her perspective can be compared with mine as I had written about it too in the post “Back to School.”
What follows is an excerpt from her article:
Where I Come From
14 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: America, Smethport, summer
A Chinese student, a talented English major from a university in Hunan, China, asked me to describe my hometown. This is what I wrote:
Smethport is very different from Chenzhou. It is like a dream that I’m afraid will seem unreal or too abstract for you to realize. Words alone are not enough to describe the beauty, wonder, and charm of my home town. But I will try.
Right now it is a very special time of the year in which we celebrate the birth of our country, the Declaration of Independence and like your country, a revolution against Imperial tyranny. Now the weather is much like Kunming in the autumn, winter or spring: everything is blue sky and very sunny. The people ride their bikes, fish, boat, swim, garden, walk their dogs, tend their lawns and the upkeep of their homes, or just go for a country drive to enjoy the scenery. Depending on the time of day you will smell fresh cut grass, sweet fresh air born upon a northerly breeze or the cooking smells of backyard barbecues that make your stomach growl.
Going Back to China
14 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Traveling Tags: China, dating, driving, humor, work
I rolled through an intersection without stopping. I pounded, tapped, blasted, and played the car horn like a motherfucking riot. And wherever I went pedestrians and motorists alike trembled in fear. America is a diverse country. That was something I had missed while teaching in Hunan last year. I had missed the Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, hipsters, Goths, jocks, blacks, whites, yellows, reds, gays, conservatives, liberals, independents, blondes, brunettes, etc., etc. Everybody was fiercely self-expressive. But when I drove in the traditional Hunanese Driving Style, I got to see the one thing they all had in common: In a flash their facial muscles flexed, pupils dilated, white teeth showed, and cheeks burned red. And then their eyes and faces melted into confusion. Yes, I am an asshole. It felt so good to be American once again.
But on the other hand I had China withdrawal symptoms. I missed China. I missed the rush of riding helmetless on motorcycle taxis through, against, and between oncoming traffic. It made me feel like Han Solo (“Never tell me the odds!”) racing through asteroids while gunned down by Imperial Tie Fighters. Living in China was a potent and lethal addiction, for China is a drug. Its novelty and strangeness and chance of death had ways of pumping your dopamine levels to Everestian heights. But it was unhealthy too.
Teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four in Mao Country
06 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in Teaching Tags: Literature, Orwell
Every Wednesday evening six Chinese girls came to my apartment. By the middle of the Spring 2010 term at Xiangnan University in the home province of Uncle Mao and General Tso, I had come to depend on them to keep me happy. They were junior English majors and picked English names like Tina, Victoria, Christie, Helen, Cherries, Emilia, and Emma. Without their attention, kindness, and passion, I surely would have gone crazy as is so much the fate of many foreigners who come to China looking for love or a new life. But I am getting ahead of myself.
It was a dismal cold day in March when I met with the vice dean of the English Department. A frigid mist blanketed the campus. The college itself clung to the sides of a green karst peak. It was the day before the official start of the Spring 2010 term. Students were still arriving from holidays spent with their families in the countryside and the cities. And I had just returned from a tour through Yunnan, Laos, and Vietnam to prove to myself that a nuclear winter had not in fact descended upon the heartland of China, and that this information had somehow been censored by the government in order to a maintain its grip on social harmony.
