Student Appreciation

"I want to express my thanks to you for bringing me so much happiness and knowledge."

So texted one of my students a few days ago, adding that she wanted to meet me to give me a gift. I expected to go home with a half-empty suitcase, having used up the tons of toiletries I brought with me. But that won't happen - I've lost track of the number of gifts I've received from students! I've been given jewellery, Chinese combs and traditional decorations. One student sang me a song and others gave me personal notes of thanks. I'll keep all of it forever.

One of my gifts bringing some colour to my apartment.

Exams are finished. Grading is finished. In marking, I ran into the foreign teacher dilemma. Apparently foreign teachers here are known for always giving high marks. Not me. In the end, I feel the students who deserved an "A", got an "A"; those who deserved a "C" got a "C". And a couple who truly didn't care and didn't do anything in the course got less than that.

On Friday, I met my friend Eva for the last time. I've mentioned Eva before. I first met her when she was in one of my classes at Web English. Eva is a Marketing Specialist and we hit it off immediately. She introduced me to some of her friends, who are also young professionals. The students at the University are great, but I'm happy to have met people in my own "life stage". I went clubbing with them last month and on Friday we played badminton in the new (and first-rate) sports facility in the northern part of Changzhou. After badminton, we had tea....with so many people, the conversation often slipped into Chinese, but that was ok. It helps me improve mine. Now the challenge is continuing to practice when I leave!

With Eva (to my left) and friends

In 24 hours I depart for my last trip in China. Along with a student, I'm going to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) in Anhui province. It is said to be the most beautiful mountain in all of China, with breathtaking views. I'm sure there will be a flurry of activity when I return from Huangshan as I try to squeeze in last-minute visits with friends before heading to the airport on Monday. I may not have time for another post on this side of the world. If not, there will be a wrap-up post from home....

Zai jian.

University Life

One of the questions I asked my Oral English students in their one-on-one interviews this week was "How is university different from high school?" Every student said that they have more freedom now than they did in high school.

Everything is relative. To an outsider like me, their university lives appear tightly controlled. University students here are very different from home. For one thing, despite being 18 to 22 years old, they are still treated like children by their parents and other authority figures. The maturity level is a good 3 to 4 years younger than it is as home - sometimes I feel like I'm teaching at the grade 9 or 10 level, rather than university. Say anything at all about dating or getting married and invariably they erupt into giggles. I had a good discussion going in one class about when someone was considered an adult in China. I had only a couple of students say 18. Most said that you're an adult when you graduate college, and a few went even farther, saying you're not an adult until you get married! (Which really should happen by your late 20s at the latest - I'm definitely approaching "old maid" territory.)

While college life in the west is often marked by parties and drinking, you can forget that here. The school gate closes at 10 pm and it's lights out by 11 pm. Try to go back to your dorm after 11 pm and you'll find the doors locked. Yes, they lock the students in. This disturbs me more than any other aspect of college life here. There are no fire escapes. The doors are locked. Apparently the threat posed by some student sneaking out to meet a boyfriend or girlfriend outweighs the risk of students dying in a fire. Students aren't allowed to have any appliances in their dorms, but still.... you can't control for everything.

Walking around campus on Friday and Saturday nights, you can look in classroom windows and see many heads bent over books. It doesn't seem like a lot of fun, but then again - it's not like I can't relate. In many ways, I feel like I inhabit some middle ground between the students and the foreign teachers here. In me, my students have probably met one of the few foreigners who rivalled their ratio of studying to socializing! Or at least until I got to business school, when the value of practice (over theory) and relationship building went up dramatically.

The students here don't appear to have much freedom, but as I said - everything is relative. University is a bastion of freedom compared to their grade school lives. They can go home on weekends. They can leave the school on weekdays as long as they're back by 10 pm. One senior student describes how her grade school life was basically lived in the classroom. Every minute was strictly controlled. She was either studying, eating, exercising (mandatory) or sleeping. After lights out, the teachers would listen at the dorms to make sure no one was talking. She was only allowed to go home to see her parents for what amounted to a few hours every month. This sounds a lot like prison to me.

A recent commentary in The Economist bemoans the "underworked" American child. Here is an excerpt:

"American parents have led grass-root protests against attempts to extend the school year into August or July, or to increase the amount of homework their little darlings have to do. They still find it hard to believe that all those Chinese students, beavering away at their books, will steal their children’s jobs."

Yes, there is room for reform. The amount of time American kids (i.e., North American kids) spend in school should be increased - to an extent. But not for one second would I trade our system for the one here. For one thing, "beavering away at their books" is not equal to engaging in discussion or creative thought. The school I teach at isn't considered great by Chinese standards, so perhaps my experience isn't reflective of China as a whole. I can just speak to what I see. The studying at this school appears to be mostly memorization. I've been told that even at the thesis level, most papers are copied from the Internet. For the most part, students have the same opinion on social issues and trot out the same lines (e.g., "Every coin has two sides"). I'm in the process of correcting culture exams and it is amazing how many answers (to opinion questions!) sound eerily the same. There may be a model system somewhere, but the Chinese educational system certainly isn't it.

River Town

I finally started reading River Town a few weeks ago. I'd never heard of it before coming to China, but apparently it's quite famous amongst ESL teachers in this country. It was written by Peter Hessler, a man who spent two years in the mid-90s teaching English in Sichuan province in central China. He and his colleague were the first foreigners in Fuling (the "village" of 200,000 or so where they taught) for 50 years. He says that they'd draw a crowd of about 30 whenever they went somewhere to eat. That makes my occasional annoying "hello" seem trivial.

I wish I'd started the book earlier. I'm finding it quite inspiring - particularly his commitment to learning Chinese. I admit to being jealous of any foreigner who can speak Chinese with reasonable fluency. As Ken noted in a post some time ago, Chinese is considered the fourth hardest language for an English speaker to learn. Yet it sounds like Hessler was able to converse with the locals within a few months. I am nowhere near that and that has been a barrier between me and Chinese society. I'm limited to speaking with those who can speak English. I can have simple (and I mean really simple - and slow) conversations with my tutors, but I get very shy about trying my Chinese in the general public. Actually, I haven't found the Chinese public particularly helpful in my Chinese learning. The blank stares, dialects and rapid-fire speech aren't exactly what a "newbie" needs. When I arrived, I understood 0% of what was said around me. Today, I'm probably still at a miserable 2 to 3%. It feels like an almost impenetrable language, which can be frustrating. Thankfully, there is Chinesepod... but that is a post for another day.

Maybe Peter Hessler is a genius or some sort of amazing polyglot. After all, the man did go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He even adopted a Chinese alter ego - Ho Wei - whom he kept separate from his western identity. Maybe if I'd been 爱米 (ài mǐ) more often, my Chinese ability would have taken off. Maybe! There are certainly days I feel "more Chinese" - perhaps I'm experiencing the beginnings of an alter ego. 爱米 puts her hair up (to better hide the laowai hair), carries an umbrella in the hot sun, can push her way onto a bus, steps out into the middle of traffic without a second thought, and walks slower, taking daintier steps. It helps that 爱米 happens to have a figure more like a Chinese woman! Amy, by contrast, is much more aloof from Chinese society. She wears her hair in full laowai curls, has the walk of a western businesswoman (i.e., a strut), has the iPod on at full blast to drown out any "hellos" or "laowai" remarks, and gets annoyed at the Chinese tendency to push (as pedestrians) and almost run people over (as drivers). Maybe it's my imagination, but I feel I'm stared at less when I'm 爱米.

I'm into my last few weeks here. I'm happy to be going home, but something tells me that if I was staying longer - a year or more - 爱米 might have started to prevail over Amy.

The 49th Parallel

As a work term student in Germany, I remember feeling indignant when a German colleague dared to suggest that Canada and the United States are very similar. No! We have a Prime Minister, not a President! We have universal healthcare! Like many Canadians, one of my biggest travel pet peeves was being mistaken for an American.

Now as an expat in China, I don’t just think the US and Canada are very similar; I think we’re exactly the same. We are just like the Americans and very similar to the Germans. It takes coming to a culture that is truly different to realize just how fundamentally the same we are on the “big picture” things that make a society and a culture – beliefs, values, customs. I no longer blink when a student asks me a question that starts with, “In America….?” And I can answer the question, even though I’m not American, because we’re practically the same. Of course we’re indistinguishable to the Chinese. We don’t even have the accent difference like the British or the Australians.

Almost all my fellow expats – those I’ve gotten to know the last few months – are American. I was the only Canadian in our orientation group in Shanghai. I’ve travelled with Americans. My fellow English teachers at Jiangsu Teachers’ University are all American. I’ve met precisely three Canadians in the last five months – one guy at a bar in Shanghai and two other teachers here in Changzhou. That’s it. When this country seems truly perplexing, when the laowai annoyances pile up, it’s the Americans I commiserate with. One of our countries may be a little more leftist than the other (a difference shrinking under the Obama administration), but we are basically the same.

After China, the next chapter of my life begins in the United States. I’m home for only about 5 weeks, and then I’m moving to DC to do my MBA. I got an email today about “International Orientation”, which starts on August 7, a full week before American students have their orientation. The email also noted that “international students provide rich diversity to our programs”. Now – I’ve had a good chuckle about my “international” status with a few Americans here. I can appreciate that I’m not American, and thus fall into the “international” category. But I ain’t bringing much diversity with me to DC. And I really hope this International Orientation doesn’t include mandatory seminars with titles like “Adapting to Life in America” or “How to Cope When English is Your Second Language.” On August 8 and 9, we have an organized trip to pick up household items, get a cell phone and other such things. Fantastic…. Having set up house in China, I’m not sure I can handle all the English-language signs.

Not only am I not expecting culture shock from DC, I already have a social network started there, thanks to two previous trips. Both times I’ve been in DC, I’ve left with a heavy heart, feeling more at home there than in NL.

Life below the 49th parallel begins in less than two months...