Teaching Integrity
Lesson 1 : The Set Up
Chamone. This is the first of 12 vignettes to update people on what’s happening out here. This is not some stylistic invention to prod people into reading past the 5th word, just a result of my passive resistance against the various and manifold evils of my company. This is my week off, but its not, thanks to Crazy Pat (more of whom later) who has landed me with an extra 12 lessons instead. Its a typically broken promise on the part of North America ESL (MUCH MUCH MORE OF THAT LATER), and while I would be happy to help out a reasonable, rewarding employer, this just feels like anathema. So following in the bare footsteps of Ghandi, I have decided to display my emotions in a non-threatening, stoic manner. Namely, a 3 minute spiel Hi I’m J-. Can you guess where I’m from? No, not America, though yes I do seem a little tall and may have eaten too many McDonalds. Can you guess my age? No I am not f*cking 30. So here are some new words. [writes on board] Zombie, monster, blood, infection, bite, epidemic. Well done. Who can connect this DVD player? Cle - ver! Now here is a British film called Shaun of the Dead. [presses play, draws breath]
The temperature has risen a few notches here, but nowhere close to the mid 40s on the East Coast. The humidity though, is disgusting.Life here involves running in between various kong tiao (air conditioning) machines and sticking your face in the vent, respite from the hot-wet-towel on your face atmosphere.
The rigours of teaching.The kids are collapsing at the vinyl decapitation scene, and anytime they hear a profanity they shoot each other a slightly scandalized glance and then stare over at me.naughty naughty roundeye.
This film is the perfect mix of slapstick, edgy humour, and barely permissible gore to gain me some instant kudos points.Only in China.How innocent they are in their red neckerchiefs, token of their allegiance to the Young Pioneers, preparatory Youth Organisation for the Party proper.
I suppose I would feel a little guilty were I conducting a lesson like this for decent, rational employers, but that’s clearly not the case.I’m teaching these lessons to kids that I’ve never seen before, for the last lesson of the semester, at the middle school section of a school where I usually teach primary.On my normal schedule I teach 23 primary classes and only 1 middle school class.It tends to be the most frustrating class. Out of class they will converse with you, chat to you about all sorts of western culture, but in class, excepting 4 or 5 students, the apathy is overwhelming.There is little in the way of disruption, but they will do their homework for other classes, feed their earphones through a sleeve, lean on their hand and clandestinely listen to music, read teen romance novels etc. Its easy to understand this adolescent indifference.Firstly, the laowai teacher is no novelty to them.They have had at least 10 or more in their academic career, and I know that including myself they had had 3 in the current semester alone.Secondly, oral English classes have no imperative exams, unlike every other subject which is loaded with them.Thirdly, the workload from other subjects absolutely swamps them, so this is catch-up time. Four, well being at your desk for 12 hours a day is fairly cr*p, so if you have an unsupervised lesson with someone who lacks either the language or implicative threats to discipline you, well blow off some steam then. And of course, there have been so many incompetent flaky whities through the saloon doors before, and all they do is insignificant trash like playing bingo and watching DVDs (I feel proud in THIS situation that I am disseminating the myth), that very little respect is held for native speaking English teachers by either the students or the Chinese teaching staff. It’s a little bit of a Catch 22 situation though; the lower regard that whitey is held in, the less serious teaching he can attempt, as the overriding expectation is of a cruisy, Cedric the Entertainer happy hour, which spirals down and down. Interestingly, the Chinese education system is trying to prevent the laowai teacher, the highest paid teachers in the system by a long way, being further marginalized, by requiring that prospective teachers apply and be accepted for teaching posts back in their own country, then come out, as opposed to the common system of feckless backpacker hanging around for a bit through teaching (trying not to incriminate Eva there). That’s the bell.
Lesson 2 : Ganlan Qiu
Have you heard the latest from the Lions camp? Clive Woodward is sending Andy Robinson to a fancy-dress party tonight. He’s going as a pumpkin. They’re hoping at midnight he’ll turn into a coach. Austin Healey
The literal translation of the above is Olive-Ball and it acts to describe both American Football and Rugby. I caught a lot of the 6 Nations and Lions Tour at the local ex-pat pub. There are a disproportionately high number of Kiwis here, which made viewing the latter fairly uncomfortable, and every-time they crossed the line I was taunted with too much weights not enough speed work! or cook the man some f*cking eggs! The Home Nations contingent obviously came back with various accusations of poaching, incest (wasn’t too loud about that one considering the size of my island) and general pie-eating. The only time it was ever annoying though was when an American pr*ck (this sojourn is certainly reinforcing THAT national stereotype) turned up, saw who was winning, and started telling everyone in a loud, forthright manner how he would have made that tackle, passed that ball, kicked that goal, made up the 30 point deficit in 2 minutes etc. The Shamrock is a strange little Laowai bubble in the Chinese Outback (well, compared to Beijing and Shanghai at least) and its easy, unchallenging and comfortable, all adjectives that seasoned self regarding travelers would scoff at. I find this attitude a little perverse, that to be a traveller you must endure unnecessary privations. I have a problem with the arrogant self-righteousness of the local pocket population of Sinophiles. This uncharacteristically forthright view can be traced back to, I admit, my 10 week stint with an unabashed Sinophile, whose manifold UGLY personality flaws would have made me despise pretty much any extracurricular agenda she could have in any case. If she had been an advocate of donkey shelters, well I may have occupied myself burning those mofo stables down. Ahem.
So Spiderman 2 has been the DVD of choice this lesson. Cycle for variation. Good for the Primary students, but possibly a touch bland for middle school. Unprofessional, but just the right response to my boss’s treat-employees-like-monkeys policy.
Lesson 3 : Morning Exercises
So as I was finishing the last note, the end of lesson bell rang. Some steel-work concentrate Euro-pop tremored out. Every kid bustling out of the class, and out of every class every student thronged down the landings and wound round the staircases. Out to the sports stadium for Morning Exercises! I’ve seen Primary kids doing their Morning Exercises everyday for 4 months. The older primary kids jog round the enclosure perimeter, the younger ones round the small grids of the interior, all to the strains of stirring orchestral music. Then the ankle biters do bunny hops and step-ups. Then they all congregate in the interior and assemble into mini platoons, jaunty Chinese pop (come and Dance with me!) kicks in and they all perform a communal Freddie Prinze Jr teen movie dance modeled on the 5 or 6 prefects at the front of the whole she-bang. The middle schoolers are different. They line up in formation immediately. A barking male voice cycles up and down through the Chinese single digits, ebbing violently over itself as a result of the PA echo. They squat stretch sway swivel and something else I cant think of beginning with S for maximum alliterative effect, again to the mechanized perfection of the prefects at the fore. It ends much sooner, within 5 minutes, and then they get 20 minutes freetime to make a dent in their immense pile of homework.
One kid is doing his homework instead of watching the film. Does that make him super-conscientious or super-slow?
I considered, that following a payday, such an approach to teaching (DVDs) could extricate myself from this contract easily. Put on some pornos, shout rudely, confrontationally and incomprehensibly, smack a few of them, threaten them with a metre rule, physically abuse members of the Chinese teaching staff and just generally be racist towards the Chinese. To give you a clearer picture of the mysterious Pat, well he did all of those bar one. Have a guess which before his mullet pops up again in these entries.
I had brought in the Sopranos with a view to watching an entire series, but due to an episode running over the lesson time by 5 minutes and the casual ultraviolence that crops up, decided against it.
Lesson 4 : Sergio’s Girlfriend
Sergio is a native Ibizan, and has a dim view of the British, as a result of working as a waiter back home and at a Body Shop factory in the Midlands. He has plenty of warm fuzzy anecdotes about Giddys (Brits abroad) sh*tting on doorsteps. How we laughed around the warm glow of the hearth. Admittedly, he has been at the coalface of UK white trash. However, I take massive exception when he assumes that these experiences qualify him to make unjust, sweeping pronouncements about the British character as a whole. F*cking Dago. His is a peculiarly intensive rather than extensive experience, and has since admitted to meeting only one family who could be called lower middle class; meeting 1000 people who have appeared on Trisha and one middle manager from Barclays does not a balanced picture make. Indubitably though, he well understands the English Pikey, the bingeing, puking, p*ssing strata. His assertion that the Australians were much more open minded than the British was incredibly provocative though. I blame the afternoon beijio session that preceded it. He’s a sterling fellow really.
So, after a long period of trying, he landed a Chinese girlfriend, Gloria. Fantastic Oral English (Yes, better than his), nice, but in a You - sure - she’s - 16? way. Sergio has assured me that she is a teacher. Perhaps too vehemently? perhaps a gifted child prodigy who has leapt through the levels of the education system?
So, met her for the first time at Eva’s apartment. A patter of chit-chat and then we picked up a taxi to Dave’s Oasis, a relaxed laowai hangout on the river. En Route, she posed an intriguing anthropological question. Why do black people eat with their hands? Eva, bearing in mind his archeological background began ruminating upon the various explanations hat could be put forth. I speculated that it was sound common sense and that for a person of my languor it would be preferable to cutlery. [so this note is getting long as I’m letting them watch the movie through lunchtime mainly cos one of them said teacher you are so cool! when I walked in and I choose not to accept any other meaning than the surface one] So just prior to Evan beginning one of his lengthy, learned discourses that I have genuinely come to appreciate (note to self -refuse his invitations to play Trivial Pursuit), she broke in with the solution. Because they can’t eat with their feet! She leant back with a Wildean air of assuredness and self-regard of her own boundless wit. The recipients of this side-splitting joke were still befuddled though, to which she grew concerned and offered us a helping hand: because their feet are too dirty! Ah! Excellent! May I declare it to be the finest jape of the season! Her face creased in outright humour, confident we had finally made the logical leap, but folded back out gradually as she waited for our ribs to be indeed tickled. So at Dave’s, Eva and I split from Sergio and Bernard and played Dojitsu (beat the landlord - Chinese card game played everywhere) for the night. As they left for a club, Bernard chastised us for playing anything so common as cards and neglecting to engage her in further conversation. Severely in fact. That’s a lesson for anyone seeking mail order brides. Beat the tongue out of them first day. Lunch time!
Lesson 5 : Inter-Provincal weekend I
The day before my birthday, I did something very un-laowai teacher abroad and attended a rugby training session, first one since leaving the old country. A game against the Southern province of Guangzhou was to follow on Saturday. A jog round the pitch, some grids, some touch, that’s my lot, over and out.
A scary looking Chinese teacher just stopped past the classroom and stared in at the movie. Paused and wrote up 5 new words for appearance sake. She left. Heartbeat drops. As the Chengdu Moon Bears (Chengdu Pandas!) is essentially a pub team, well back to the Shamrock for some Mian Fai (free) beers. Rehydration is key at the elite level. Despite having a full schedule next day, drinking went on, another bar was visited and finally a fairly plush club. All in stinking sodden trainers, Umbro shorts and a replica rugby top.
Chinese nightclub rule #1 roundeyes are allowed in regardless.
The game followed birthday celebrations. The odour of stale beer seemed to be trailing me everywhere. Our tubby ex-pat team was slightly taken aback to note that in complement to their tubby ex-pat contingent, they’d also brought members of the Peoples Liberation Army, including this 6ft5, broad-as-Boycott’s-accent guy who used to alternate between lock and prop for the National Team. FREAK! nothing to write home about concerning the game. But in a moment of true Peter Kay linguistic contradiction, I will. 4 quarters of 20 minutes, true sign of the wheezy loafer. Uncontested scrums. Trainers. incompetent refs. I did bugger all, with the exception of running 20 yards with 4 of the PLA hanging off me, stopping inches short of the line. Reminded me of Matt Dillon brushing aside the Mungoes in Something About Mary (so we tied Mungo to a washing line, and he could run-and dig… Was disallowed another, but finally got my first inter-provincial try when my bulk was put at 8 from 5 yards out. Dynamic! Anyway, both calves exploded simultaneously in the fourth quarter and that was that.
Lesson 6 : Inter-Provincial weekend II
Next day all my Jonguor (Chinese) peeps stopped me as I was doing the rounds of the ‘hood. First was Cigarette stall man, our friendship relying solely upon my mastery of Chinese, so as you can guess it is a touch stilted. It was formed when I took a picture of me and him to fill up a memory card, he bugged me for ages, making the charades of a photograph, so I gave him a print of it. The next day, he had framed it and hung it centrally on the back wall. Yikes. He says hello to me. I say ni hao to him; a beautiful account of breaking down the barriers I think. Anyway, the rugby, he pulls me over, and on the front page of The Chengdu Daily, potential readership 11 million, the local paper of the biggest city in Western China, my pained facial expression and mongloid stride, spilling gut, all in support play, smack bang in the center of the front page. Potato man pointed it out to me, as did ice-cream couple, hot-pot wenches and finally my apartment guards. Where everybody knows your name… Sorry that’s inaccurate. Where everybody knows you’re a lumbering honky..
I like the hood. None of its deeper than pure friendly novelty value, put the people seem genuinely friendly, or perhaps stiff with fear, hilarity or astonishment.China is a hard place to truly integrate, what with past history, complex customs, difficult tonal language systems and their written symbols. Even if you did achieve knowledge of these things after several years, you would still be the laowai. Being the short-term novelty is great fun, but the motivation of the long term Sinophile is hard to understand, as so much effort seems to be so poorly reciprocated. As such, most hard-core students of Chinese have major personality imbalances, or are losers at home and want to be the center of attention abroad (QUIET) or have just plain got the Yellow Fever (see later entries).Perhaps that is too harsh and the result time spent with a selfish domineering hag who was on the rag for 2 months straight.
End of Day 1. If you’ve made it this far reward yourself with a celebratory jig.