A Journey to Hengshan Mountain
13 Nov 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: Buddhism, dreams, fox women, guanxi, Hengshan, nature, Students, Taoism
We took the midnight express back to Chenzhou from Hengshan late Saturday night. This meant getting dirty. I once spent four years as a grunt. Digging foxholes and wading through marshes was dirty work too. I look back at this previous incarnation with nostalgia as I board a crowded train in which tickets were sold beyond seating capacity for people to stand or sit in the aisles. The windows were sealed shut. There was the sound of people hawking up snotty yellow mucous. Chewed up sunflower seeds and cigarette butts scattered upon the floor. Old men with rotten, nicotine stained teeth smoked in the thresholds between cars. They came back to their seats smelling like death and brimstone. One such man hovered above me in the seat behind me. He was listening to the banter of my seat mates: five college age boys with long finger nails and high hair were engaged in a riveting discussion with my two guides and a lady returning home from a Shanghai shopping trip.
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.
The Journey Began
05 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Teaching Tags: Drama, dreams, Literature, nightmares, private schools, public schools, Teaching
Reality Laid Somewhere Between Daydreams and Nightmares
I got out of bed at dawn Wednesday. It had been restless night spent thinking about all the clever things I would say to make students wonder if I was some reincarnated Confucius in disguise. I had spent the last few days losing track of time in a kaleidoscopic tour of Chinese culture and hospitality. And I had spent the nights of that last disorienting week of summer vacation dealing with nightmares about the first day of class. These nightmares had nothing in common with my daydreams. In them I was continuously lost in labyrinthine hallways, losing my books despite fruitless nightlong search and rescue missions, and showing up in class naked. Teachers all over the world were having similar nightmares.
That morning I ran around the campus and fried eggs with cilantro and chilis and cooked oatmeal for breakfast. I listened to a podcast on teaching literature and recited poetry to warm-up my vocal cords. Then I put on my best pressed out clothes, slid into a pair of spit shined brown leather shoes, and double-checked that I had everything I needed to teach my first lesson. I advanced confidently in the direction of my dreams with a book of Tang poetry in both hands, breathing deeply to harness the power of qi for the long day’s journey ahead.
