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But seriously, it’s super easy except for the bus ride there. Quentin and I were invited to be judges in an English speaking competition. The kids were from all over the city and they all went to the competition with the same topic: Western Holidays in Chinese Culture.

Here’s some trees on the way to downtown Yantian. I don’t know if I’ve shown them to you before. They’re wrapped in gold foil and Christmas garlands. I thought it was topic appropriate:

Here’s a “massage parlor” in Yantian. Lingerie hangs outside just like at all legitimate massage parlors. It’s closed during the day for a not-skeezy reason I’m sure:

So the bus made us take 2 hours to get to the northern part of the city. It was super lame. It made us late. We were going to a mall called Book City. We were getting phone calls from the coordinators about how late we were (we were supposed to be there at 2 and we finally arrived at about 2:05). As I understand it they were ready to start at like 1:50 so we made them wait even though they told us to arrive at 2. China lol. Anyway one of my students ran out to meet us at the bus stop so she could guide us to the mall. We wouldn’t have found that mall had she not met us out there. It was down a few blocks and didn’t look like a “bookstore” like people had told me look for.

So we walk in and there’s the stage set up. Quentin and I took our seats and then the show started. Some students of mine came out and started speaking in Chinese and then English. One of them is like the most outgoing girl in any of my classes. She introduced herself to me the second day I was in school even though I hadn’t come to her class yet. “I’m in your class! You should get to know me. We’ll be good.” Unfortunately I was a little flustered at the time and have since forgotten her name (which is annoying, I wish I knew her name).

This was on Halloween so they had this weird thing where they would go: “1-2-3!”
Audience: “1-2-3!”
“Trick! Or! Treat!”
“Trick! Or! Treat!”

Then they repeated that a few more times and threw candy out into the audience.

The girl who walked us from the bus stop was taking pictures as well as another student of mine. Check out how important I look. So weird, I’m just some guy from the US:

Speaking portion of the competition (this is the girl who eventually won actually):

Singing portion?

This is the group where Quentin and I had to give them specific things they needed to change and stuff. In all honesty they were really good. I didn’t have a lot of negative things to say about them. I thought they did quite well. I remember one time me saying something like “It’s cool, relax. Even if you’re not confident just relax and things will be okay. Just chill.” The kids really need a pep talk cause they’re all really good but they’re not confident. As soon as I told them to chill they laughed a little and become a little less stiff. People have been telling them all their life that they’re not good enough. No praise from their parents unless they achieve perfection, it’s the Chinese way. Quentin had the same thing when he had to talk to them. He basically said to be confident and we’ll stay with them. When the microphone was handed back to the show coordinators the first thing out of their mouths were “It seems our foreign judges are too kind. Thanks contestants!”

Wtf? C’mon, we just built up their confidence!

Aaawww perfect little Chinese children! This little girl won some candy for answering questions in English. She knows more English than I know Chinese (Not true Jade, I swear I study. I’m actually uh… studying right now?)

Hmm.. yes, yes.. mmmm…

We earned little datebooks for participating as judges:

“Hubbubub…”
“Yes.. hubububuh…”

Whoops, accidently looked bored… :-/

Actually that was a weird moment. The speech portion of the show was over so it was basically killing time for people to tally up the judges marks. What they would do is they would have skits and things related to English going on. One thing they would do is show a clip from a movie on mute and then dub over it with their own voices using the same script that the movie had. Basically this meant I was watching a movie where everyone had a Chinese accent for some reason. They did one scene from Hairspray where some characters said something like “That nigger-loving commie.” This caught me off guard and was mostly funny, but then it suddenly got more weird (as everything seems to in China). They were dubbing over Madagascar. At one point in the script the Zebra asks something like “Don’t you guys ever get tired of being pampered like this? Don’t you ever want to be able to take control of your own life and see what’s on the outside world?” All the characters respond with “No.”

Disney’s Madagascar, when dubbed over by English speaking Chinese people, has a lot more layers to it than you expect.

After the scores were given they said something in Chinese and told Quentin and I to hand out all the 4th prizes. A line of people stood up at the front on stage. They gave us things to hand them, but they didn’t tell us that all of them were 4th place (they said that part in Chinese of course) so Quentin and I were mostly bumbling around the stage confused about why they kept handing us things. Then I would gesture about having the people handing me things hand them out and I guess I was also supposed to shake hands with them like a diploma ceremony? I don’t know. I feel bad that I fumbled some kind of honorable thing for a bunch of kids, but they didn’t tell me anything. They just kind of shoved me out on stage after speaking a bunch of Chinese.

After mingling a little bit Quentin and I walked out toward the bus stop again. We looked around for food, but Quentin wasn’t too big on spending a lot of money, so we kind of wandered a little bit around the immediate area:

We went into this library (the lower U-shaped building) because I saw people that looked like they were sitting and eating. Turns out they were sitting and reading. Possibly the most boring alternative to eating a delicious meal. However the library was really cool on the inside.

The library is on either side of a road, one half is silver themed and the other is gold, then there’s a massive roof patio that goes between the two halves. It’s pretty cool up there cause there’s nothing to get in your view of the nearby city:

We came up in the silver half, here’s the gold half of the library. Modern architecture in the US is so boring:

So then we hopped on the bus for the nice and easy 2 hour ride home. Here’s a useful fire escape in the ceiling:

There’s a superpower that many Chinese people seem to have, it’s the ability to fall asleep on the bus and wake up moments before their stop. The person on the right had headphones on, asleep, yet they woke up about a stop or two before their destination. I’ve seen people snap out of sleeping mere seconds before the bus comes to a stop and then get off the bus. How do they do that? That’s amazing.

Speaking of sleeping, here’s a picture my Chinese teacher (Jade) took of me. It’s called “Sweet Dreams in Chinese Class”:

I awoke 15 minutes into class very very suddenly. I don’t know what woke me up, probably the Australian guy in our class. Either way, it was a little bit embarrassing. I had no idea what was going on, where I was, how I got there, nothing. My heart was going like crazy. The first 20 seconds or so was people laughing and me being in a weird in-between dreamy state/wake up state. Then I tried in vain to be a class participant for the next hour, but who was I kidding? I was in a weird mental state the rest of the day after that, nothing felt real. Wednesdays are just super intense. I have 5 classes back to back and then Chinese class where I just feel completely worthless because I’m just so exhausted. Anyway now I can’t throw chalk at sleeping students in good conscience.

However I still throw chalk at them if they’re reading a newspaper instead of paying attention. They really care about their hair a lot here so I always try to make it a headshot. Someday I’m going to get some kid in the eye, but that’ll learn ‘em.

Anyway, as it was Halloween the week before, I didn’t really know what to talk about. We had done all sorts of lead up to Halloween and then suddenly it hit and I didn’t know what to do after that. Not only that, but this was the week before midterms. They really didn’t care about any class that wasn’t being tested (my class). So my floundering lesson the next week was “Candy”. I talked about the history of food, sugar, the history of the word, slavery over chocolate in west africa, free trade, how to make taffy, what’s a “s’more”, etc etc. Then I had them draw candy and talk about the flavors and ingredients in it.

The lesson was pretty much fail. It didn’t work. It’s hard to talk about something that’s as tactile as candy and not actually have the tactile object in class to look at. So it was fail on a lot of levels really. However, it did produce some good pictures:

I found a out a new trick during this lesson though. When I asked for volunteers in one class, some kid said: “Pick from the list!” and I said “What list?” Apparently there’s a little sheet of paper on the podium that’s a list of names for every kid in class. It’s not in English so I’ve never really known what it was for, especially since the kids change spots but the chart doesn’t change. Whatever, it keeps them on their toes. I just draw a random character on the board. It makes them really excited cause they don’t know what it is until I’m about half way through. Then it gets even more tense when there’s more than one student named “Yu.” When someone is finally chosen they think it’s the most hilarious and awesome thing in the world and they clap and cheer and so forth. In all honesty I just choose the kids with the simplest name for me to copy. Is your name only made up of four lines? You’re coming up to the board.

A couple times I would draw some character but then the kids would be like “There’s more than one Li!” and I would say: “Everyone with this character in their name stand up!” Then like 8 kids would stand up. “All of you draw on the board!” So I just had every kid in class named Li drawing on the board. It makes me laugh.

With this next one I called one kid and he came up to the board and started to draw. Then he was taking a little while so I randomly called up another kid. The first one turned around, saw who I called, and then went “no no NO NO!!” and then the other kid I called ran up to the front as fast as he could. They immediately started drawing each other and at the same time trying to not let the other person look at them and use them as a model. So they were like drawing as fast as they could while at the same time pushing on each other’s faces so they could draw the perfect candy caricature; it was hilarious:

IIRC the letters are made of gummy and the stars are chocolate. This is the same girl that came to pick up Quentin and I from the bus stop. She really didn’t want to draw hers on the board, but I randomly wrote her name in Chinese so she had to. After class she immediately ran up and erased it as quickly as she could:

Here’s a good one:

I had someone make “Shit candy” almost every other class. I’m sure there were more, those were just the kids that I called on. Poop, being gay, and sex are the key points to make any kid in Chinese high school laugh. I would say it’s really not that different from US high schools, except that their obsession with poop goes a little farther than you think. CLICK HERE for a link to an actual, real, honest to goodness restaurant chain in China. It’s called The Modern Toilet. It’s a whole restaurant (chain, let me just remind you again… restaurant chain) where everything inside it is themed to be toilet related. Hot pot, chocolate ice cream eaten out of a toilet, etc etc. Seriously, they love poop.

My favorite is on this board:

Here’s a close-up:

I love this picture on many levels, most of which start at the straight-line-as-a-mouth. Just so you know, it’s made out of cherry gummy and peanuts.

On another note, I go to KFC maybe once a week or so. I really like having something that’s not Chinese food. Plus there’s pictures. I mean I would take more Chinese food if there were just pictures to help me along a little bit. I just thought I should show you this world class piece of culinary perfection:

Yes, it is two times as good as a regular sandwich from KFC. However there isn’t much in this world that will make you feel like more of a stereotype than ordering something that looks like this in a restaurant on the other side of the world.

In all seriousness, I actually do genuinely love these things in the next two pictures. They’re like these little cups made of phyllo dough filled with custard and jumbo tapioca balls. They’re super good, really. I love them:

You March Like a [You know what they march like]

Once again I came across my students doing something weird that I didn’t understand. I often wonder how completely normal this school would seem to me if I understood what they were saying over announcements and if I was invited to teacher meetings. I was walking home at one point and looked down into the courtyard to see this:

Click for two videos:

CREEP FACTOR 5

CREEP FACTOR 9

The students were clearly a little self conscious because they spotted me looking at them. So I let them be and went home. Except then I saw this going on out in the soccer field. I caught it right at the end. I didn’t know what was going on, the mystery only deepening:

I talked to some of the students. Apparently it’s a marching competition. All the Senior 2 kids were out marching in formation. Each class marches the same of course so it’s a competition based purely upon discipline, not creativity and discipline at the same time. Senior 1 (my kids) were all doing the it the next day. This meant all afternoon classes were cancelled for this competition. I feel bad for them because none of them want to do it (something they’ll only tell me of course). They think it’s pointless. They were telling me “Yes, I guess it teaches discipline, but when am I going to use this in the future? It is pointless.” Statements like this make me extremely interested in knowing what china is going to be like in 10 years and then 20 years. The kids aren’t hardcore nationalists. They are more nationalist than I think the average US person is, and it’s a little weird sometimes, but there are these seeds of doubt growing in them. The cultural shifts that are happening so quickly lately are fascinating to watch first hand. Like I’ve talked about before, the generation gaps here are miniscule compared to the rest of the world. A mere 5 years or so and you have a new crop of people that think completely differently than people their age 5 years previous. I’ve heard as little as 3 years but I just can’t believe that at all. After interacting with people here I can say that I think 5 is actually doable and it’s only hard to believe just because I mean… no… a generation gap in 5 years of time? That’s ridiculous.

Anyway I went to Chinese class. This is a picture of the junior campus where I always pick up the bus home:

On this evening the bus was out of gas so we went to the local Sinopec.

I hate the Sinopec logo. Everything I know about logo design (of which I admittedly don’t have a lot of knowledge) tells me that this hits every wrong mark. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a logo with more malice:

Though I also hate the new Pepsi logo. It makes me think of someone grimacing out the side of their mouth:













After the gas station I came back to hear sounds off in the distance. Chanting. Turns out all the senior one classes were out there practicing doing their routine. If they win they get like a certificate or something. It’s all about winning honor for their class. I felt so bad for them because I know the ridiculous workload they have. The fact that they have to stop doing their homework to do a marching routine that they find pointless makes me feel rather empathetic. Give the kids a break. They have so much crap to deal with 24/7. It’s not like their class can easily go “look we’re just not going to do it” either, cause they’ll stand out there and look like idiots in front of the whole school. There’s no easy choice for them, they just have to do it. Here’s a picture of them coming back inside so they can finish their homework:

The next day was the marching competition. I got the afternoon off, but I wanted to watch… for 2 and a half hours… liang dian ban I think (I’m learning how to tell time this week).

There are two videos that I think pretty accurately show what happens in every class’s performance. The first I admit is kind of boring, but I wanted to show it anyway (it’s the same kids that were practicing in the courtyard). The second has the beginning yelling part that I missed in the first video. It’s a lot less creepy when their footsteps aren’t loud and echoing off of everything:

VIDEO 1

VIDEO 2

Here’s some pictures. I get especially happy when I see girls that are leaders. Class leaders are like 90% male which is odd given the almost 70% majority of girls to boys at this school. I’ve noticed a definite trend in that women don’t seem to have leader/boss roles in China. They do, but it’s rare. They always seem to be in at least a slightly subservient role compared to a man. I’ve seen one female bus driver for instance and the only ticket people I’ve seen are women. When I’ve seen panels of people talking it always seems the men have the floor longer than women. Women are always used as pretty faces outside restaurants to get customers while guys are the ones that hand out coupons ads on the street. I’ve heard a Chinese guy refer to cleaning tables as “women’s work” in all seriousness.

I’m sure the glass ceiling here resembles a coffee table:

After they march they file out and do their exercises:

EXERCISES

Then they come and sit against the bleachers on the ground. Mostly the kids just sit there talking and trying not to be bored. They stop paying attention pretty quick. I think the judges yelled down at them to be quiet These girls decided to play Cat’s Cradle with their ribbon:

This class took off their watches to make themselves more identical. Their homeroom teacher walked through and handed them all back. He was scooping handfuls of watches out of his bag. One of those things you find that people suddenly own if they’re not allowed to have a cell phone:

Kids waiting and watching for their turn. As the show went on the bleachers slowly lost audience members as they had to go down to the field and do it themselves.

My parents say that back when I played T-Ball I would miss the ball because I was busy sitting in the grass looking at dandelions. Check out this little wingless bee ant:

Also the cement looks like a grenade. Anyway back to the China thing going on in front of me:

This video makes me laugh a little. I thought it reminded me of a robot for some reason, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I figured out they’re moving and running exactly like Asimo. I’m sure it’s probably the other way around:

NOT ASIMO

I like the kid at the bottom of this one: “Say whaaat?”

I like this picture a lot. This is when they’re doing their exercises:

Obviously I’m not the only one who thinks this is amazing (though perhaps for different reasons?):

At the end of the production everyone had to go out into the field so the judges could talk at them:

CLICK FOR MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PEOPLE

After the performance students were coming up to me being like “Dennis! What did you think about it?”
“Um… It was fine…”
“Oh fine? That’s all? uuugh!”
“It was like nothing I have ever seen before.”
“Ohhhhhhh.”

A teacher was talking to me afterward asking my opinion on it. I had to explain to him how crazy it was to watch for me. He was a little confused. He said it felt a little strange to him because he didn’t have to do this when he was young, something I’ve heard mirrored by other teachers. Clearly there’s been a bit of a nationalism drive since they were in school and I wonder where else I can see these effects. I told him we don’t do activities like that in the US unless you volunteer to do it, and we especially don’t march the same way.

“March the same way?”
“Yeah, we don’t kick out our legs out like that.”
“How do you march?”
“Like this” *show him*
“Oh… interesting. I thought everyone march the same.”
“No. We would never march like that in the US. That kind of march is famous because of [due to my website being blocked in China, I've edited this post and replaced certain buzz words. You know what I'm talking about though: a famous group of people in Germany that did a lot of not-so-great things. Also other people who run countries using a style that starts with a Total and ends with an itarianism]”
“Oh. I never thought of it that way.”

I’ve had this same conversation with a couple of people. They’ve all found it to be a brand new idea that they never thought of before. I’m sure Chinese education doesn’t touch on it that much.

Culture Shock and the Midterms

So I finally actually started dealing with culture shock. I’ve read some sites stating that the name is a misnomer, it should really be called “culture fatigue”. Basically what happens is for the first little while that someone is in a new country they’re all like “Whoa this is awesome! Everything is new and different and cool!” This was me of course. Look at my previous posts and how often they used to come compared with now. Then eventually things start getting normal and you just kind of… hate everything. You feel a general sort of malaise. You lose your sense of humor, you don’t want to talk to anyone because it’s just so tiring. Little things start to really ride on you.

For me the biggest thing is not being able to eat what I want. Not being able to just go someplace, look at a menu, order, and eat. Next is the language. Not being able to understand anyone. Having every single conversation or question being turned into a big production because of language barriers. There’s also another issue here that I’ve discovered that makes things even more difficult: People simply won’t listen to you. It’s not that I’m saying the words wrong, it’s that they assume that I will say the words wrong, so they don’t listen to what I am saying and instead react to what they think I will probably say.

“Do you have…? *finger motion indicating a keychain*”
“Ah yes, over here.”
“How do you say this?”
“8.50.”
“No, how do you say this?”
“8.50″
“No, not how much does this cost, how do you say this?”"
“It was 9.50, now it’s 8.50.”
“*sigh*”

I’ve had times where they’ve been in a group and the first person listened to me and understood. Then when I asked for confirmation that I was saying it correctly, they assumed that I must have meant to ask something else. Then they immediately flip over into whatever their preconceived notions of questions that foreigners ask is and they never come out of it.

“How do you say this? *pointing at french fries*”
“*says the word that probably was french fries*”
“like this? *repeating their word*”
Then a friend next to her goes “No no, he means how much is it! 3 yuan!”
“Ah! 3 yuan!”
“No, how to say it?”
“3 yuan.”
“What is the name of this?
“3 yuan.”
“No… fine… I’ll take it.”

Just FYI “How to say” and “How much does this cost” sound completely different, so it’s not that I’m saying them wrong. I’ve said it to other people and they’ve understood. It’s just that they really do assume that I can’t speak the language and just try to shuffle me along away from them as quickly as possible because they’re nervous. It’s really really frustrating because it completely shatters your already shaky confidence in the language. I thought I was just making it up until I talked with some people about it and everyone has similar stories.

One person I talked to speaks pretty fluently and he said he would order from this restaurant by phone all the time because his roommate wasn’t very good at it. One day is roommate had the confidence to give it a try. The roommate called up, started speaking, and then they said “No” and hung up. The fluent guy walked down to the restaurant and they started talking to him “Someone called from your number but it wasn’t your voice, we think it was your roommate.”
“Yeah he says you hung up on him”
“Well we don’t understand English.”
“He wasn’t speaking in English, he was speaking in Chinese.”
“Oh.”

On the flip side I have almost too many people trying to help me sometimes (It also seems I can complain about anything). Everyone corrects your Chinese with their different accents so you don’t know which way is the “correct” way and everything gets all mixed up. It’s like being taught midwestern English and then someone corrects you with an accent from the deep south. At the same time everyone throws new words at you all the time and I can’t tell you how many words don’t just sound the same, but actually are the same. They have different characters, but they’re spelled the same way in pinyin and they have the same sound. We have that in English of course, but it’s like there are about 60 times more in Chinese than in English. There’s tons of them. I feel like there are maybe 200 different words total and then after that they just mix and match them and give them new characters (or just put two characters next to each other to make a completely new word, but you have to know that if those two characters are next to each other in that order it means this new word, not just those two words one after another). So the amount of “jiang”s and “jian”s and “shi”s and “tian”s just start to get really really confusing. You know them as one thing in your head, and then suddenly it’s something completely new because of the context.

Man I’m whiner. Sorry, I’m just trying to point out this whole culture shock thing. What exactly culture shock is like. It just starts draining you. Information/stimulus overload pretty much. There’s a lot of pressure as well (from yourself, from other people, etc etc.).

“How come you don’t remember how to say banana? I just taught you yesterday!”
“Because I’m also learning how to say directions.”
“You must try harder, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

So over the course of a few months all the little things build up and up and up until finally you just wanna say “Fuck everybody. I hate all of you. Why should I even try?” I was definitely feeling that way, I’m still kind of feeling that way a little, but I’m better. Mostly because I realized what was happening so I was able counteract it. Another reason I was able to get through it is because right when I was feeling the worst about everything, all the kids had midterms. This meant I got 3 days off plus the weekend. Quite lucky, it was great. I loved it. It really recharged me. Also Chinese class that week wasn’t actually us learning so much in the way of Chinese. It was just very relaxed with me, my Chinese teacher, and one other student (everyone was away on a vacation/trip somewhere). So we just talked. It was soooooo nice to just sit and talk.

Anyway, that long weekend I could have gone to Hong Kong, but I chose not to. I really wanted to just relax. No adventuring, just stay in my local area for a little while. Which I did and I don’t regret it at all because now I feel much more upbeat and healthy

Moving on, while I sat in my apartment I got to see this wasp that was as big as my thumb and I think is the exact real life example of what a bee from Donkey Kong Country (called a Zinger) would look like in real life. I miss the days when absolutely every single bad guy in a game had his own personalized tongue-in-cheek name. Just look at the strong colors on this wasp, they’re beautiful:

I went out to a muslim restaurant with some teachers from CTLC over the break. I love muslim restaurants. I wish I could find more of them. I like how clean they are. Their food also feels more fresh and light instead of heavy and greasy. Anyway, this is one of the buildings that was nearby. The Chinese do this to their buildings a lot, just add neon for no real reason:

A horrible picture of some people taking dance lessons in the park:

The inside of the fruit section of a grocery store I stopped in. This is such an exciting grocery store compared to my Everybody Happy Mart:

Are you sure?

I love the amount of effort that went into making this DVD cover. Why didn’t they just use the actual cover from The Whole Ten Yards? Instead they got the cover from Live Free or Die Hard. That’s not enough though, they went through the extra effort of getting the font that matches Live Free or Die Hard’s font and then photoshopped in “The Whole Ten Yards” to look real. They knew they had the wrong cover because they had to do all the photoshop work to take out the old words and put in the new words… why? Why did they do this??

“Not Cars 2″:

“Not The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer”:

I also saw a Peter Jackson’s King Kong and King Kong 2 twin pack at the store again. I will buy it if it at least comes with English subtitles, but I don’t think it does… :-(

So while I’m off doing all these things, the kids are still studying and doing midterms. They had tests all day for 3 days. This was down time between tests. 3 tests per day. One day would be an English test, a History test and a Geography test. The next would be Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and I forget what the other 3 subjects were. Probably a Mao test, Communist test, and a China is Awesome test:

I think, but I’m not sure, that this group of people out there with the arm bands is a Communist party thing. I only think this because I was told there was going to be some kind of Communist meeting thing going on in the school at some point in the near future:

So I went out to eat at KFC again and came back home to find the students (of course) still studying. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this on this blog or not, but I found out there’s actually a reason we spend so much less time in school than the Chinese (whether we mean this to be the reason or not). We spend less time in school because we need to get bored. When a person gets bored, they then figure out what it is that they like to do. Some people fix cars, some people play sports, some people get high, some people go out to get a job, some people study science, I did art and animation. After you figure out what it is you do when you’re bored, you kind of just keep doing that. You might not be the best at it, but you will be the most driven to succeed because you enjoy it the most. These kids have no time to figure that out so while they may be good at something, it isn’t necessarily what they enjoy doing, they just do it because they have to. They have no time to get bored ever. Their whole lives are scheduled and tested (Including the weekends with piano lessons, tutoring, and singing). These schedules and tests send them down different tracks to better or worse schools and eventually they know whether they’re likely to be a garbage man or an accountant by the time they’re about 14. It’s unfortunate.

There’s such potential here creativity-wise. I would love to see what they could do if they were given a little bit more freedom in their day to day lives. The fresh new ideas that they could produce because of their different cultural and historical background would be so cool. I wish I could see what art they could produce if given more of an opportunity. It would be brand new. What would they say? What would their influences be? What medium would become the most common? That would be so cool to see something so brand new from such a different perspective. It wouldn’t just be art even, creativity goes into every business. They could have interesting new advertising campaigns or new inventions etc etc. I want to see it so badly.

This is them when I got back from dinner. They were everywhere in the school studying in any available location:

Their scores on the midterms are as important to them as their scores on the finals. Their midterm scores will place them in a different class if they do badly. The kids in the “Elite Classes” can’t do poorly or they will lose face and have to get put into a lower class. Meanwhile the kids in lower classes try to do well, but it’s actually harder for them to move up. It’s easy to move down, hard to move up. This is simply score related as well. I had a girl come up to me the other day talking about science colleges in the US and that one of her big goals in life was to move up into class 1 instead of class 10 or 11. I said “You’re a smart kid, what does the class number have to do with you as an individual?”
“I guess nothing. It would be very nice though.”
“Don’t focus on moving up in classes, focus on your future and college. When you go looking for a college in the US they’re not going to care if you were in Class 1 or 3 or 4, they’re going to care about you, your skills, your drive, and your grades. It’s all about you, not about the people you sit next to.”

She seemed very happy after our chat. She said she wanted a pep talk because people kept saying she would never succeed because her grades weren’t perfect.

So at one point this week my lesson didn’t go as planned. I want to start getting them to learn how to argue and persuade, the definition of “lying by omission”, etc etc. The way I did this was to show them advertisements and point out how they were being persuaded. In one class all the equipment failed. I had no backup because it was picture and video based so computer fail means lesson fail. So what I did was just talked to them about lying by omission. They got bored though, so I started talking about tests and stuff, basically seeing if my rant from above was true. I got some very honest feedback from them about testing. They feel it’s completely pointless. They say they don’t actually learn anything, they just know things. They were telling me that they knew the answers for all sorts of questions, but that was it. They just know the answer. They don’t know how to get to that answer, what the answer means, why the answer is that answer, just the answer. They talked about how they hated one of the tests because they were supposed to give their opinion on something, but in actuality they were supposed to give the teacher’s opinion or they would get marked down, even if they backed it up with their own supported evidence and such. I talked to a teacher about this, and they said that their hands were tied because the teacher had to mark that way or they would get in trouble. The students told me: “We feel not attached to anything because it’s not us and it doesn’t affect us. We never need to know these things in the future and they do not teach us anything, only what the answer is, not why the answer is or what we think.”

At which point I exclaimed that they had better take advantage of my class more often so they can give their own opinions on things. I told them they can say absolutely anything in my class and it’s okay. I’m not going to get mad at them for saying what they feel and I won’t say they’re wrong for giving their opinion (as long as they back it up). They can even criticize me if they want, I’m cool with it (I had a rather brave student do that a couple weeks ago). However, this does make me want to figure out ways to give them more opportunities to give their opinion on things, I just have to figure out topics they care about. They didn’t really care about candy and I doubt they care about Mario Kart, Blanka’s backstory, or the circumstances under which Han Solo married Princess Leia… :-/

After talking with a teacher about the importance of midterms in the US (sometimes we don’t even have them) I went home. Then I found out that fluorescent bulbs can short circuit from overheating:

Eventually the next week started up and everyone went back to normal (although with a lot of panic from the students over their grades).

Also remember those kids breakdancing with the num chucks? I finally got a video. Wait for it to load and then look for the “I’m cool” point about 12 seconds in:

“AH, A FELLOW CHUCKER AY?”

Also play fighting:

Here’s the piles of tests being sorted by students and teachers:

It was colder the next day (50 degrees):

… and there were also more tests:

One of the teachers asked me about how to mark a certain answer on some tests. They asked which of four options made more sense to say. I don’t remember what the answer was, but I do remember that two of them were wrong and the other two made absolutely no difference. I told them this. They said that was too bad because they had to mark one wrong, so which one was the right one? I was like “Seriously, they’re exactly the same. It doesn’t imply anything differently saying it one way or the other.” “Well, we’ve been marking this one as wrong.” Personally I would have just wiped it from the test and not had that question affect anyone’s score, but they needed there to be a right or wrong answer. Once again I feel bad for the kids. Quentin had a whole class ask him about a question which he found was marked with the wrong answer, and the class was overjoyed because they all got it wrong by answering it the right way. Their disillusion doesn’t come from nothing.

I just wish that I could free them up to talk about what they want and not be stuck under this weird umbrella all the time. I try to make my class as open as possible and make myself as available as possible (”Are you able to talk now?” “Of course, I’m a teacher, I’m always available to talk.” “Oh, every teacher is always busy”). I don’t blame this on the teachers at all by the way, I’ve talked to them and even they don’t like the way they have to teach most of the time. They wish they could free it up a little more themselves.

Even though my class is very open and I am very open, they’re extremely nervous to use the openness. They’re a little bit afraid of it. I coax answers out of the kids when they’re too shy to say things somtimes. One girl I talked to was talking about Obama being in Shanghai (which most people are only kind of aware of I think, it wasn’t covered very well. Obama is very charismatic so they want to limit that influence). She started saying “Well our chairman is- Nevermind, it’s not right for me to say such things about China.”
“No, go ahead and say it, we’re the only people here and I’m a foreigner.”
“Well… he’s not a very good speaker.”
“That’s all you were going to say about him?”
“Yes.”
“You were afraid to say that?”
“A little.”

Again, I’m very interested in what this country will be like in 10-20 years. I feel that tensions will only rise as freedom of information gets out to the masses while powerful forces to try to keep it tamped down.

This post is a little bit of a downer near the end. Sorry. A lot of things happened what with the culture shock down point and the kids being so honest (and their sad reality being given to me). I’m all better now though.

So to end on an up note I thought I would share the thing that made me start out of the pit that is culture shock. While food, talking candidly, and relaxing certainly played a big part in bringing me out of that funk, the moment where I regained my sense of humor about life happened very suddenly when got to hear the Chinese version of a very famous song. Click to watch:

OH CHINA, WHAT WON’T YOU MAKE A CHINESE VERSION OF?