Traditional Chinese Medicine & Elizabethan Theatre
24 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Teaching Tags: alchemy, Bartleby, Bee-Bee, chi, death, Drama, education, fate, freedom, Gee, Julius Caesar, life, Literature, madness, magic, Project Gutenberg, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, TCM, The Congo, theatre, Traditional Chinese Medicine, tragedy, troll, undead, Vachal Lindsay, yin and yang
With 16 teaching hours per week and a four day weekend it seemed that I had an abundance of free time. There were no office hours required, but I provided nine hours during evenings throughout the week for students wanting to talk about literature, culture, or life. It had to be evenings because the studentry were in classes all day long, day after day. But despite this I was practically on sabbatical.
I had the free time to get literary, practice yoga, explore grimy Chenzhou, and plan my upcoming Tibet expedition. I contacted the Xiangnan University medicine school faculty to meet with them for a tour of their facilities, and learn about the Chinese health care system. It would make for another podcast. And I researched online. Research was the first step to finding out what I wanted to learn and explore.
Before I contacted the medicine school, I acquainted myself with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The internet enabled me to consult the starry forest of the night, and find homeostatic balance between yin and yang, anima and animus. The stars aligned and those who had the sight could decipher them and see the interrelationship between the macrocosmos and the microcosmos. I felt chi flow around me, through me. But I was not a Jedi yet.
Teaching Thoreau in the Heartland of China
21 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Teaching Tags: American Pie, dreams, Literature, Thoreau
I was teaching Thoreau in a time when the Chinese were migrating from the countryside into the cities. It was a new Industrial Age—but this one was taking place during the age of globalism, cell phones, and Hello Kitty. Experts estimated that a population greater than that of America’s total population would move into Chinese cities within the next 15-20 years. There I was at the vanguard of this exodus where some of my students had left their families behind in the rice paddies. These students were their family’s only hope.
But for those now living and working in the cities, there was the heady pleasure of shopping. The cities became a Promised Land, and consumerism quietly ousted atheism as the dominant faith. In the Promised Land you could work in a factory and escape the ceaseless toil of the rice paddies. Of course, it was your job in the factory to crank out more stuff for other people to buy. And of course, you had to tear down the last vestiges of traditional China, and bulldoze Mother Nature in the name of progress. Anything to modernize China. Anything to become a member of the middle class. Yet for some Chinese these issues of modernity were recognized as a problem—and without Thoreau having to tell them.
Thoreau: His Life and Times
20 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts Tags: Civil Disobedience, nature, Thoreau, transcendentalism, Walden
In this literature class I explore Thoreau by delving into his perspective on life and his motivation for choosing a spartan lifestyle, despite having a Harvard education. I am surprised by the brilliance of one Chinese student’s penetrating question about Thoreau — one that I had never heard before. The whole class works on an answer!
Dinner with the Yu Family
17 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: art, blood, cultural infiltration, fried duck feet, hospitality, kindness, Twilight, vampires
One late summer evening before the sun went down, I was at dinner and had what appeared to be a glass of Chinese wine at an open air restaurant from across the campus. Children surrounded me. It was cooler now and all the neighborhood children were playing. One by one they came by my table pretending to ignore me. Once they realized that I didn’t bite, they made eye contact with me and squealed in surprise.
A university student saw that congress had formed at my table and we were all chatting amiably. I was trying to teach the children English and the children were trying to teach me Chinese. The student introduced herself and offered to translate for the children. Her name was Lucy and she was chemical engineering student at a university in Shanghai. Through Lucy, a little girl named Chi-Chi, asked me why my eyes were so blue.
I told Chi-Chi that my eyes were blue because of my beautiful mother. This made all the children laugh and my translator blush.
Drama Week 1: Suspended Disbelief
14 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts
This is the first day of drama class. I enter the classroom posing as a doctor, wearing a white lab coat, surgical cap and stethoscope around my neck– all borrowed from a medical student at the university. For this mini-drama, I carry my Medical Terminology textbook and introduce myself as “Doctor Matt”.
