The test, how it went

Well, like many things in life, the big language test was a bit anticlimactic. I think everyone more or less passed it. The level of competence they were seeking did not involve all that much depth. And probably we could have passed it about two or three weeks ago. Nonetheles, it was a real test and you certainly had to know Chinese to pass it. But you did not have to know that much Chinese that well. Thank God.

Before the test, one of my teachers had given me the advice that if you don't understand something your testor says to ask "shenme yici" or "what is that," so that the tester would try to give you more information in Chinese because she would not tell you in English something she asked. On the other hand, if you wanted to reply with some word or phrase you did not know, it was legitimate to ask "hanyu zenme shuo?" or "how do you say that in chinese." I had recourse to both of these strategies during the interview.


So as I said, we had a rougly half hour conversation with an outside tester. Our conversation was recorded so that if there was any question there was a record. You begin with an informal conversation, partly in English and partly in Chinese. When the tape started rolling you were asked some simple questions to make you fell at ease, such as "what is your name.' Even here though I stubmled because the way you are asked for your name is with the term "mingzi" and I had forgot that you are also sometimes asked for your surname or "xing," which is your last name. As an interestiing side note, this is how Chinese introduce themselves, by providing their last name first because of course that is much more important than their individual identity. Luckily my "what is it" came in handy here and with a couple of prompts from her in Chinese I was able to figure out what was being asked. After a few more questions we were asked to talk in a little detail about some things, and I tried to talk about my campus and where I would be teaching. That went alright, not great.. Then we had to do a role play, where the teacher would provide a scenario which we would have to enact. Luckily I wound up with a relatively easy one, having to buy stuff at the market. Some of the other ones people were given like trying to rent an apartment or talking to an elderly person about a wedding would not have been so easy. Even here though nervousness made me stumble a bit. Finally we had to ask our questioner a couple of questions, and this was pretty easy.

Anyway, we don't get the results till next week but I am not really worried. But neither am I particualarly satisfied with my level of language competence, but that is my own fault. It is good to know, the Peace Corps will pay for a tutor while we are in country, and this is something I will certainly take advantage of.

Ting bu dong

Just finished the last of studying for our language exam which we will take tomorrow. The exam is an oral exam and we will meet with an examiner for about a half hour and have our language skills assessed. My test is at nine a.m. Although no one knows exactly what questions we will be aksed and what material will be covered, there is one phrase I can definitely count on using tomorrow. Indeed, it is the one phrase I have used more than any other since arriving to China. It is "ting bu dong." It translates as "I don't understand" but much more literally means "hear not understand." It's one of the first phrases you learn and one I have used in every class. It is also one I hear in many interactions. For example, at the local shop where we buy a lot of small items, sodas, beers, et. cetera, the woman who runs the shop used to try to speak to us and I would end up saying "ting bu dong," and it got to the point where when she would see me she would simply look up, laugh and say "ting bu dong." She always said it in such a slow, laconic manner that I didn't mind hearing it. On the other hand, Mrs. Z will sometimes speak Chinese at dinner and she will invariably reach a point where she says something, looks at me and asks "ting bu dong," which is essentially "you don't understand, do you?" And of course innumerable times in class it gets pulled out when you are so lost you can't even understand the question. The alternative is to ask the teacher to repeat what was said, but that is a much longer phrase: "qing zai shuo i bien," so "ting bu dong" is a lot easier, even if it involves more of a loss of face.

Anyway, I can't say I'm nervous about the test because we are told it is truly not that difficult and assured that given our level we should have no problem. And even if we don't pass, the worse that will happen is that they will require us to get a tutor. Still, this is a country where "losing face" means quite a bit, no one wants to fail this exam. So stay tuned, although we won't learn the results until we go downtown for our final conference before heading off to site.

Social Insecurity

An interesting discussion with Mrs. Z on our evening walk (wanshan sanbo). In case you were wondering, we still take a walk almost every evening, usually about an hour or so after finishing dinner, the three of us, usually on the same route. Sometimes Mrs. Z quizzes me on my Chinese and sometimes I try to exchange words with Mr. Z but often Mrs. Z and I just lapse into English conversation because that is the easiest thing to do. Usually it is nothing very interesting, just the details of the day, but today she started out by asking me about "the American welfare system." She said she had never asked anyone about this and so I tried to explain it as best as I could. You realize it is all quite complicated, of course. I explained that the term "welfare" usually refers to aid given to poor families, especially familes (often single mothers) with young children. I also explained that this was overhauled ten years ago so that there must now be a transition made to work.

But it turns out what she really wanted to ask about was how much the government gives those who retire. Mr. Z is retired and Mrs. Z is looking at retiring soon (as an interesting side note, there are mandatory retirement ages here, I think 55 for woman 60 for men but I could be mistaken so don't quote me on that. This is necessary in part I gather because of the large labor force. There is another interesting discussion to be had on conceptions of retirement). Anyway, it seems that when one retires here one in essence gets one's full salary that one had before retirement, and that one can continue to live in essentially the same manner one has before retiring. I explained to her that this was not the case in the U.S. and that one really could not afford to live on one's Social Security (another term that had to be explained) and that most people I knew were saving for their retirement and not counting all that much on their government income.

Mrs. Z did not seem to care too much for the U.S. system. I think it points to some interesting differences in worldviews and might be a good topic for the American part of the American and British culture class.

Confusion

Confusion reigns. I went to the university where I will be teaching, Sichuan Normal University, in order to get some clarification on my schedule and to make sure that they understood that I would not be arriving for two weeks. This fact still seemed to be news to some of the people I talked to, although I gather they informed my class when they showed up that I would not be there for two weeks. I imagine the students were delighted, although the people I talked to seem decidedly less so and still seem genuinely puzzled that I wouldn't be there and uncertain of the exact time I would start teaching.

To make matters worse, there is another American teacher there, a non-Peace Corps person, who is teaching four sections of the same class as I am, British and American culture. We were given the textbook today. Indeed, she taught two classes today--without the text book. Indeed, she thought she was teaching a class in American culture and was suprised to learn that, no, she was teaching a class in British and American culture. She seemed to know as much about British culture as I do. I think everything I know about British culture came from Monty Python's Flying Circus. But it is unclear to what extent we need to stick to the textook. It is also unclear to what extent we need to coordinate our classes. Indeed, the only thing that is clear is that there is much that is unclear. But at least I was given the times for four of my classes. I will be teaching Monday 2-3: 35; Tuesday 2-3:35; Wednesday 8-9:35 and 2-3:35. I will certainly be given more classes. But it was unclear exactly what or how many those would be.

We were told to be prepared for chaos, and our brief stint teaching model school at the campus where the classes were ultimately cancelled and just the last two months in China I think prepared us for this.

Anyone for duck?

The meals around here are nothing if not predictible, which is actually a good thing, at least from my point of view as someone who does not like surpises especially of the culinary sort. Breakfast is always an egg (usually hard boiled, occasionally scrambled), a hot bowl of milk and some bread. Mrs. Z gets a kick out of it when I break the egg apart and put it between the bread to make a sandwhich of sorts. And dinner has settled into a fairly constant number of dishes that get rotated. You can tell they have taken great care to see the dishes that I like and then generally serve some subset of those. So there is usually some form of tofu, a lot of vegetables, e.g. eggplant, tomatoes, squash and a bowl of rice. And not a lot of meat. So it is a pretty healthy if predicatble diet.

Today, however, we had something new, and quite a production was made of it. "Beijing kaoya" or Peking roast duck. There was a bowl with duck meat in it, another bowl with some vegetables and another with what could be descriped as mini tortillas. Mr. Z took great care to show me how to combine the tortilla (o.k. it wasn't a tortilla, but I did not catch the name of what it was called) the meat and the vegetable and finally how to dip it in the sauce.

It was delicious, one of my favorite meals. But the best was saved for last, and Mrs. Z brought out the bowl with the baked duck head in it and said this was the best part and offered it to me. I told her I was full and she proceeded to pick apart the duck head for what she said was the tenderest meat and I took her word for it. She went on to explain that it is better than rabbit head, which is another delicacy, because with rabbit head there is no meat and you must just suck it for the flavor.

On a similar not, the big grocery stores here sell baked chickens just like the big grocery stores in America--except that the chicken still has its little head baked on it and there is in the store all cooked and ready to go and just staring at you with that dead baked head. In a way I prefer this way of doing things to the American way. Here at least you know you are eating something that once lived and breathed and in America we hide that fact by having something in the store that looks nothing like a living creature. So there is a level of honesty here I can appreciate. There also may be an good argument for vegetarianism, but that is another story.

language games et. al.

1. In case you were wondering, I was unable to get on last night. Technical difficulties with the web site.

2. We played a language game yesterday. Our language teachers set up a series of elaborate tasks we had to complete. They had a classroom all set up with four stations: a ticket booth with a train schedule, a bus we had to take to the train station, the actual compartment of the train and a police station. We had to perform a series of tasks: buy the ticket, take the bus to the train station, sit with some local people and converse, buy something from a vendor and finally go to the police station and file a report that we had left something on the train. The language teachers and various friends and children played the various roles, There was one trick where there was someone selling you a ticket before you got to the station, and if you bought the ticket from that person, you had to go back and complete a series of tests before you could start over again. I think they did a pretty good job of simulating the real situation and it was good to see if our language skills had any practical capability.

(I should say this whole thing was quite competitive in a way that simply would not occur in an American classroom. There was a big production made of having to compete against other students by having a sort of jeopardy like competition in order to even be allowed into the simulation. In general the language classroom can be a very competitive environment and I think this says much about the nature of the education system here. In order to get into college students must take a test at the end of their high school and that test essentially determines what college they are going to, and that college to a large part sets the pattern for their life. So they must learn to get good at competition and not crack under pressure because their future success truly depends on it. In America, there is really no equivalent to the test that high school kids must take. The SAT in America simply does not have the finality of the test these students take. Anyway, something really clickeed today. I felt I understood why they have set up so many competitive activities in even our small language classroom. It has always seemed to me to go against the notion that there is nothing worse than losing face because in these competitive classrooms someone will lose face. But competing against the loss of face is the necessity to succeed in a competitive environment. So I think it is a contradiction on the surface, an interesting contradiction, and one worth exploring in more detail)

3. This is all in prepartaion for our big language test which we take nex Thursday. We must achieve a level of what is called intermediat low on the test, or else. . . Or else what I am not exactly sure. Nonetheless, most of us will spend most of next week preparing for this exam. It is all done orally with a couple of testors quizzing you and giving you scenarios and just trying to talk with you to determine your level.

4. The sad news today is that one of the volunteers was involuntarily sent home. The story is still unclear, but he was one of the few volunteers I knew and I am sorry to see him go. This is one thing to keep in mind, though. The three previous people who left from other sites left voluntarily for one reason or another. This was the first person sent home involuntarily. This reminds us that we are still trainees and until we get sworn in the Peace Corps can pretty much send you home for any reason if they don't think you're Peace Corps material or if they think there will be some problem with your service. They are just protecting themselves since if you go out there and screw up, it is the organization that looks bad. I guess back in the old day they used to have a couple of psychologists at the training site to judge your mental fitness for service. And even now our behavior is recorded and it wouldn't surprise me if some people were asked to go home before the swearing in ceremony.

5. Speaking of the swearing-in ceremony, it is Thursday September 7th. We stay at our host families nine more days and then move to a hotel downtown for three days of meetings and our official swearing in ceremony. A week from Friday we will be at site and on our own.

6. Which is just as well, because things are starting to fray at the edges out here. It is a lot of time to be in relatively closed quaterts, and all things considered I think things are going fairly well. But it is a long time together and the strain is starting to show. It was especially apparent at our end of the week meeting yesterday. It is my suggestion--backed up by a volunteer from last year who I was talking to--that the burden should be lightened in the last week or so. We've been going at it pretty hard for over two months and soon will have to hit the ground running with a full teaching schedule. It would be nice to have some calm before the storm. Just a suggestion.

Dr. J

Doctor Joanne Polka is a tall, slender, middle aged woman with short hair who commands the respect of every volunteer. She is the main Peace Corps medical officer here in China. She shows up every other week or so to give a presentation, invariably loaded with graphic pictures,for example, of twenty foot tapeworms or images of micrscopic bugs maginified several hundred times to reveal their true horror. She has told us parasites, the effects of smog, and the dangers of drinking too much. She has lectured us on everything from how to disinfect our vegetables to how to deal with depression. And when she talks, people listen. I am reminded of the old commerical about the stock brokerage firm that read "whenever E.F. Hutton talks, people listen" and would show someone in a restaurant or other crowded place and they would say something like, "Well my broker is E.F. Hutton and . . ." and then everyone in the restaurant or wherever would stay silent.

Today, she lectured us about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases with the usual graphic accompaniments. I need not go into details. She has an odd yet effective way of making this and all issues both of tremendous import and yet incredibly light. I don't know how else to put it. Like any good doctor, I think, she has an oddly detached manner which comes from having seen so much that is so awful. So she can talk about the most horrible of situations with a sort of profound detachment that makes you take it seriously but yet allows you to put the whole thing in perspective and not get too freaked out, for lack of a better word.

From her I have been convinced of everything from carrying around my own pair of disposable chopsticks to not eating pork in China to not worrying about malaria protection in most of Thailand. She is, as it were, the Dr. Andrew Weil for China volunteers, the ultimate authority on all matters of the body.

One of the benefits of being in Chengdu is being not very far from the good doctor.

Peace Corps Leave Policy

Today we had a training session that had everyone's undivided attention for the first time in a long time. No, it was not my session on teaching writing, although I did give that today. Rather it was the session on the Peace Corps leave policy, that is, how many vacation days one gets with the Peace Corps and how and when we can use them. Now, I must admit that it struck me as quite odd, given the fact that everyone has sacrificed so much and worked so hard to be in the Peace Corps, and yet can find nothing more interesting than how to spend time away from their Peace Corps assignment. But I am as guilty as anyone.

The whole thing is actually quite complicated, and there are nine different kind of leave. But the one everyone is interested in is annual leave. This is in essence our vacation time. Peace Corps volutnteers earn two days vacation for every month they spend in country, starting when we are sworn in in September. And we can't take any leave the first three months in country or the last three months of our service. And after nine months, we can take an advance on the leave we will ultimately earn. So that means we get 48 days over two years to go where we want and do what we want. For those in China, the further limitation that we obviously can't go anywhere when the school year is going on, and we also have a couple week mid service training in January and a summer project of anywhere from 2-4 weeks each of the two summers. If one stays in country (China) one does not have to count the weekend days as part of leave but if one goes out of country, then all days count as leave time. So the main time for vacation is on the first year winter semester break--sometime in January and February--the first year summer break, usually July and August (though you do have the summer project), and the second year winter break. Since you can't go after May of your second year, you don't really have a second summer break, but you are done in July/August anyway and so take your break when you finish service.

I hope you were all paying attention, because there will be a test on all of this.

Goodbye China 10

I had hoped to have a picture here of the two volunteers who have finished their two year stints and left us today. But I forgot to bring my camera today so hopefully someone will e-mail me a picture and I can post it. Daniel and John are/were China 10s, by which is meant that they signed up in the tenth year of the China program and just completed their two year service. We, the new group, are China12s. Daniel and John have been with us since we got on site, and they have been our guides into the ways of what it is to be a Peace Corps volunteer in China. In a way they are a study in contrasts, Daniel the more aggressive and outgoing type, John a gentle and calming influence. John is heading to Shanghai to be in charge of a group of middle school teachers and I am not exactly sure what Daniel is doing. I know he is going to be doing some travelling before going back to the states. We have had numerous volunteers drop in for short periods of time but Daniel and John were the constant presence, always ready to answer our questions and calm our fears. We have administration and facilitators enough here. But Daniel and John somehow made serving in the Peace Corps more real. There very presence here somehow made the possibility of us completing our service more real. Today, then we said goodbye. We made a big banner for them and everyone signed and oversized card and then at the end of our session today we each took turns reciting a line from "You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings," which would not have been my first choice but was an oddly fitting farewell. It was also a way of remindin us that we have a little more than a week on site and then we are the new face of the Peace Corps. China 10 is dead/Long Live China 12.

We have returned

Sorry this is late.

Everyone came together yesterday to discuss their site visits. For the most part things went smoothly. People arrived at their destinations; they were met by the appropritate persons at more or less the expected times; they were shown their apartments, which were more or less fine; they were given their teaching schedules, which were more or less what was expected; and they returned back on time and without incident. But of course, there were exceptions.

Most traumatic: One woman's bus broke down about halfway into her trip. People got off the bus, stood around for a while and then started to wander off. Alone in the middle of nowhere unable to find anyone who spoke English, and slowly being abandoned by her fellow travellers, she undestandably got nervous. Thankfully she still had her cell phone from America and it was functioning (though I imagine it had to be some roaming charge). She called the program supervisor, grabbed one of the passengers and handed him the phone. Two more busses, a car ride and another phone call later and she finally made it to her site--about six hours late.

One volunteer was greeted with the site of a bat in his room. Not a baseball bat, but the kind that flies. Not knowing what to do, he knocked on the door of his next door neighbor, an old Chinese man, who promptly took care of business and left the bat corpse in the toilet. Remarkably, it flushed down.

Another volunteer described an epic battle with a spider, which he at first wounded by taking off several of its legs with a rock. But four days later a noticeably angry three legged spider returned--only to meet its own untimely end.

There were apartment surprises. Some nice, some not so nice. One couple reported that they have a combination kitchen and bathroom which is located outside on a patio. This should make for some interesting meals in the winter, not to mention some memorable showers.

Upon his return to Chengdu, the cab driver of one volunteer insisted that the university at which we are staying did not exist, and so he took him to the American embassy.

All in all, though, I thought things were remarkably uneventful and certainly could have been a lot worse. Most importantly, twenty of us left and twenty of us made it back.

Book Report 1

As busy as they are keeping us here, I haven't had time for much reading. Indeed, it is not easy to find English language books out here. And given the weight restrictions that we had on our luggage, everyone was reluctant to carry too many books. In the few books I did bring, I tried to stick to a local theme. So I brought two classics of Chinese philosophy: "The Analects of Confucius" and the "Tao Te Ching." In addition, I carried with me a copy of "Soul Mountain," the major novel by Gao Xingjian, the first and only Chinese ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. So I'll give a quick review for those interested and will continue to report of my reading in China. Those not inclind to such matters might want to stop here.

"Soul Mountain" is a fairly good sized book, not exactly Dostoevksy but about respectabl at about five hundred pages. And it's taken me until a week or so ago to finish it, and I started it before I left China. In part this is because of the lack of time I've had for reading and in part this is because the book can be slow going. It especially takes a while to get into it. There is not a narrative in the traditional sense of the word. It begins with the author on a journey, and it is I gather an autobiograpical one. In 1983 the author was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Later it was discovered that the diagnosis was a mistake, and this revelation resulted in the author taking a journey. "Soul Mountain" has as its core this journey across China, but it mixes many other elements in it as well. The author will veer off to relate an ancient myth, for example. Or the author goes from being with one person in one place to being in a completely different location with new people, with no connection made between the two events.And sometimes the narrator's voice drops out completely and we are left to wonder who is telling the tale. As I said, it can be disorienting but I think it is definitely worth working your way through. You get carried along not only on a journey of space and time but on a voyage of ideas, even if you are not always sure where you are going on either.

I will quote the closeing lines: "I don't know where I am at this moment. I don't know where the realm of Heaven comes from, I look all around. I don't know that I don't understand anything and still think I know everything. Things just happen behind me and there is always a mysterious eye, so it is best for me just to pretend that I understand even if I don't. While pretending to understand, I still don't understand. The fact of the matter is I comprehend nothing. I understand nothing. That is how it is."

Don't Compare

Well, I am back at my site and safely ensconced inside of the Zs spare bedroom, reflecting fondly on and already missing my brief taste of freedom. I feel like I do upon returning to Utah after visiting another state. Ah freedom! Well, it will return soon enough, in a little more than two weeks to be precise.

In the meantime, since getting back I've been running into some of the folks returning from their site visits and feel sort of cheated because I was the one who had to stay in town while other people ventured out. We have been told time and time again that a Chinese saying is to never compare, and to illustrate this the symbol for "compare" is something like two knives to remind you that to compare is like sticking knives into yourself, which it truly is. But the two questions that everyone seems to ask each other, the two points on which we probably all violate this precept, are living arrangements and teaching load. Someone I talk to has a brand new apartment, while mine looks like something out of the Honeymooners. But then there is someone who has their kitchen on a patio, which is nice in the summer (save the bugs), but not so nice in the winter. Someone else has a shower arrangement where the bathroom floor is in essence the shower, except that it doesn't drain so much as stand stagnant. As for teaching loads, as I mentioned I have a very strange load, with eight hours of British and American culture, when I know nothing about British culture, and eight hours of oral English, which meets every other week, and a two hour film course, which means that I will have 18 hours one week and 10 another, which averages out to fourteen. I hear that there are others who only have 8 hourse a week, while a lot of folks have 16. And of course the level of everyone's students vary incredibly. Some of us will have students who are quite proficient while others will have barely English literate students.

So really, I think this thing about not comparing is probably a pretty good idea. We are all worse off than some and better off than others in pretty much everything, not only teaching load and apartment size. But like all good advice, it is probably something that for the most part we ignore.

Americana

Spent the day reconnecting with my roots.

There is an American style restaurant in town. It's relatively close to the Peace Corps headquarters and is usually filled with Westerners, especially weekend breakfasts (which I haven't tried yet. It is called "Peter's Tex-Mex Grille," but is usually just called Pete's. It's a welcome respite when one gets tired of struggling with a Chinese menu, or of Chinese food in general. But of course it is not cheap. But not bad either. I had a big "Chicken cheese steak sandwhich" with fries goes for a little under two bucks. I have primarily gone there for dessert. It's about as close as you can get to a choclate milk shake over here, but it is still quite a distance away from the real thing.

Across the street from Pete's is "Sabrina's Country Store," a small place that stocks a number of foregin goods, and a lot of American products you can't find anywhere else. I have picked up Grape Nuts there, but sadly when I went in there today they were gone, and the woman did not understand my request and tried to show me the "nuts" section. They also have tomato sauce and brown rice there, which is what I picked up today. I have probably eaten more white rice since I have been here than I have in my entire life and plan to switch to the brown rice once I get out on my own. And peanut butter. They have "Skippy." There is also a small import section at the "Carefour," which is the big chain grocery store (based in France, I gather) that everyone goes to (and right next to a McDonalds). They have a fairly decent pasta selection (while for some reason Sabrinas has none). About the only thing I definitely will not be able to get here (provided that Sabrina restocks the Grape Nuts) is Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice. If anyone has any pull over at Tropicana, you might want to drop them a line. I think there is an untapped market here.

One thing I have yet to find is a toaster. This is in part because no one eats bread over here. I have picked up at" Carefore" something that is a pale imitation of wheat bread, probably more like whole wheat Wonder Bread than real wheat bread. But I've yet to find a toaster, though I have seen toaster ovens (which cost almost as much as microwaves).

Coffee. I had planned on going cold turkey, figuring "when in China...." ANd in truth at my training site I really have not had any coffee, because there isn't any, just some instant which I have only tried once or twice. But this week I could not resist and bought some ground coffee at the "Carefour" and put it in my french press. The only thing is that it was ground way too fine for my french press, so it didn't come out quite right. Still, it was definitely coffee, and now I wonder if I'll be able to go back to just tea. To make matters worse, there are three Starbucks in town, though the whole bean coffe prices are pretty outrageous, over fifteen dollars a pound. My guess I will probably be sticking to the import brew I found at "Carefore," which seems a grade up from Folgers but certainly no starbucks.

I think these small ways of connecting with dietary routines are one way to maintain an equilibrium over here. Or perhaps it is just a form of denial.

Teaching schedule

I got the essentials of my teaching schedule, sort of. I should say that the classes are scheduled a bit differently here. To begin, most classes meet only once a week, unlike in American universities where classess meet usually three times a week. So my normal teaching load at Weber is four three credit courses per semester, or twelve hours a week. We were told that our teaching load at Chinese universities would be 14-16 teaching hours, so I knew it would be higher. But I did not know that for the most part each of those hours would be a separate courses. So here is what I got.

To begin, I will be teaching 8 hours of something called British and American culture. I knew this was a very popular course at universities here. And I also told people when I was asked that I know nothing at all about British culture. Nonetheless I was told there would be a textbook, and that it was important that I stick to it and not only teach American culture, and I said fine. Second, I will be teaching 8 hours of something called "Oral English," which is essentially what I taught this summer and is just getting people to practice speaking. But the course will only meet every other week. So I will still each class of students eight times. Finally, I am to teach a course on American film that meets two hours a week. This should be fun. I get to pick the films, primarily because the university owns no films, so that means I have to buy the films. But dvds are cheap enough out here. I was also told that I should teach "healthy" films that teach values. So I guess that means I won't be showing the episodes of season one of the sopranos which I bought with me.

To summarize, this means that every other week I will be in the classroom for 18 hours and every other week I will be in the classroom for 10 hours, which averages out to 14 hourse a week. The culture course, because it is simply teaching out of a textbook, should be easy, if boring. The oral english course will only meet 8 times so that should be pretty easy to prepare, and the film course should be fun. I am still hoping to do some activity that will let me understand in a little more in depth manner the intellectual climate here, and I found out there is a National debate contest that students participate in and I am trying to convince them to let me train the students. But I haven't heard back on that one yet.

New site/new toilet

Well, I am at my site, and I am so happy I could just sh**. Literally, because I have a Western toilet. Now this might not seem like much to be happy about, something you all take for granted, and so did I. But after six weeks of squatting, it was quite a relief to finally attend to nature's business in a position wherein you could read a magazine, or juggle if you want to. Of course, you could do either activity in the squat position, but you'd have to be really talented. But I digress.

I am at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. "Normal" simply means "Teachers College" and SNU is the main teaching training campus for the entire Sichuan province. I will post the English web site below and hope you can follow the link. If not you can copy and paste. If not, don't worry about it. I am supposed to be familiarizing myself with my campus and its surroundings, but yesterday I met with people and today I took the bus into the downtown to do shopping to try to get my place in shape. So perhaps I'll have more information about the area tomorrow There is a track just about a quarter mile from my apartment where I ran this morning, and we had this huge rainstorm last night which cooled everything down so that it was almost chilly this morning (almost), but it soon returned to damn hot by this afternoon. We''ll see what tomorrow brings. Anyway, the web site is listed below. Zai Jian.

http://web.sicnu.edu.cn/en/AboutSNU_1.html

Chinese haircut (worth every yuan)

It's the necessities of life, the things that you take for granted, that can just sneak up on you over here and make life, ah, interesting. So it was with my first Chinese haircut. I had delayed things as long as possible. Tomorrow I would be visiting my campus and meeting with faculty and administration, so the hair had to be chopped. The question was, how. Of course, you can just walk into a barber shop, point to your head, and they would more or less figure that you wanted a haircut--there was not even any necessity, really, to learn the term. It's not like you would walk into the barbershop to buy fruit. But the key question was not whether you would get a haircut--you most certainly would--but what kind of haircut you would get.

As the day for the haircut neared I began examining the hair of the people around me and did not like what I saw. The local style, as trendy as in might be, was not for me. It seemed to consist in cutting the hair as close as possible without actually qualifying as a crew cut. At least I knew of acouple of volunteers who had braved the world of the Chinese barber. One had gone with a Chinese speaker for some assistance and one had gone in by himself, and in neither case was I overwhelmed by the results, and in one I was actually a bit frightened. But I could delay no more. I had gotten the location of the barber that the volunteer who had stumbled in on his own had gone to and was determined to make my way there and take my chances when Mrs Z offered to go with me. So with Mr. Z in tow we walked into an area that had a number of barbershops and walked into one pretty much at random, whereupon ensued a converstaion in which Mrs. Z acted as interemediary and I tried to establish some parameters, but by the time I sat down in the chair I had no idea what I would end up with. So it started out with a wash, and then a cut, and then another wash. I tried to keep my eyes closed for most of the cut but I could tell hair was falling out at a rather rapid pace. And by the time he had finished, well, I had certainly gotten my money's worth. Or rather, much more than my money's worth, since the haircut had cost five yuan, or about eighty cents.

THe Giant Panda Research Center/Duck Soup

The reason there isn't a picture of a panda in this post isn't the usual one. i.e., that I did not see a panda that day, but one uniquely related to the local culture. One of my classmates, Max, has been telling me that I was invited to go with his host mother and father to the Panda Research Center this weekend. The "Giant Panda Breeding Research Base" is located only about ten miles out of Chengdu and, like it says, is a place for doing breeding research (as well as the actual breeding of) pandas. I had been hoping to go there and was looking forward to going there this weekend, but by Friday Max said his family still could not tell him when they were going, and by Saturday morning I had actually forgotten about the whole thing. I had gotten back from my run and finished breakfast and was actually planning on taking the bus into town and scoping out my campus when there was a knock at my door and Mr. Z was excitedly saying something I could not deciphter but it soon became apparent there was someone on the line. It turns out it was Max's houseparents and that we were to leave now. This was not a miscommunication or a failure of Max to let me know. This is how things happen here, in a last minute or last second fashion and one must adjust. So I just put on my shorts and shirt and headed out the door and by the time I was downstairs they were ready to go.

It was certainly worth the inconvenience. I had seen a panda once before about fifteen years ago at the zoo in Washington, but I got to see about twenty or so out here. Although they can roam around, the ones we saw were in their cages either sleeping or eating bamboo. The highlight though was the panda nursery. The first twin pandas in the world this year had been born on August 6th and were in incubators. They were literally no bigger than mice. When you consider the size of a full grown panda, which is after all a bear, it is hard to believe they start out this small. I gather that two babies is very hard on mama pandas so they were in incubators to take care of them and assist the mother who would nurse one at a time. We also saw in the panda video that mama pandas can sometiimes be a bit rough with their newborn and this may have been a bit of protective custody. Anyway, I hope to get some pictures ultimately because Max's father was snapping up quite a few, and when I do I'll let you know.

Max's parents (who I should say are probably in their early 30s) took us to try a Sichuan speciality for lunch. It is known as "old duck soup." The tables at the restaurant have a sort of souppot built into the table. In the pot is a duck that has bee stewing in water for quite some time. And importantly, it is an old duck, because supposedly old ducks are better for your health. You order some things to throw into the pot: vegetables, dumplings, etc. After having some broth and picking some duck off the bone, the vegetables, dumplings, etc, are thrown in and allowed to boil for a water, and you pick the vegetables and dumplings out. It was quite good, though I'm sure the duck would have a different opinion of the whole thing.

As typists and secretaries

The morning session dealt with the issue of gender as we are likely to encounter it during our service. We were told that in general, single female volunteers seem to have it more difficult than male volunteers. One of the female volunteers who has been here a year related how although her male counterpart at their site is lousy at Chinese while she is quite good, when they go out, people in general say they cannot understand her Chinese but complement her companion's. And in general males are taken more seriously. That is just a fact on the ground to deal with. On the other hand, the females are not pressured to drink at banquets the way males are. In general, there seems to be very specific gender roles. We had our Chinese teachers serve as a panel to answer some questions about gender in China. When someone asked whether a man could engage in traditionally female activities while still maintaining his respect as a man, they agreed that while he could do things like cook, embrodiery was definitely out of the question. And when we enquired whether women were involved in politics the answer, given without the least bit of irony was, "Yes, as typists and secretaries." When was asked the panel of our Chinese language teachers whether a woman can be successful in business or politics, they said yes she could, but she would probably have to sacrifice her family. As to why the same was not true of men they only responded that the woman needed to take care of the family.
Of course as in many countries where there is public gender discrepancies women here often assert their power in private, and in general women can be said to be the true force in many households. Of course, no country is without gender discrepancies; they simply assert themselves in different ways, and are sometimes more overt and sometimes less overt. I haven't made a close study of these things so far, but it will definitely be something to keep my eye on during my time over here.

And speaking of my time over here, the second half of our morning session dealt with the concept of mental health and the volunteers state of mind. There are predictable highs and lows in one's service, we are told, and at some time or other during one's first six months almost everyone will begin to wonder what the hell one is doing here. This is true regardless of your location. Supposedly if you can make it through the first six months, you generally make it through the rest of your service.

In the afternoon, instead of language class we did a mock run of going to the bus or train station from which we have to depart on Monday. We were just told the name of the station and nothing about how to get there and were just supposed to ask for directions. Because I am the only one who is not taking a bus or train out of town, I could go with whichever group I wanted and chose the group that was going to the bus station for busses to Chongqing, since the few people I will probably visit are in Chongqing. Its about a four hour bus ride and I will probably head up there about one weekend a month I bet. On the other side of this equation is the fact that I am the only one of our group staying in Chengdu so I will probably be pretty popular since people will invariably for one reason or another be coming back to Chengdu, especially for medical stuff (one bright side of staying in Chengdu in that this is where the Peace Corps medical facillity is).

The Envelope Please

And the winner is....Well, after six weeks of waiting and anticipation, of going from our homes to San Francisco to Chengdu, after being farmed out to three training sites and teaching a model course and taking language classes and five days a week eight to five and enduring the heat and the shock of living in a strange land, we finally found out our assignments today, where we will be going for the next two years. As I mentioned in the previous post, the plan was to bring all sixty of us (58 to be precise) together to the hotel where we originally stayed when we arrived in Chengdu and to make the announcement there. They couldn't have known in advance that it would be the hottest day of the year and that the lights along with the air conditioning would be out at the hotel. I have sweated more here than I have sweated at anytime in my life and I sweated more today than I have at any other time in Chengdu.

So we are all gathered in a big ballroom and our chairs are placed in a large circle. There is a map of the various sites in China where the volunteers will be placed drawn on the floor. And we are given a red towel (it wasn't exactly a towel; I'm not sure what it was) and we play hot potato with it, passing it from one person to anothe while the Peace Corps country director for China beats a drum. When the drumming stops, the volunteer with the red towel (or whatever it was) gets up and goes into the center of the ring and is told where his or her assignment is. Some of them are quite far flung and will require thirty plus hour train rides from Chengdu, while some of the assignments are in Chengdu itself. As I mentioned earlier, we knew ahead of time that most of us would be going to Chongqing.

Well, wouldn't you know that of the sixty volunteer I was the second to last to wind up with the red towel (or whatever it was) and find out my assignment. And it turns out I am staying in good ole Chengdu. I will be at Sichuan Teachers College, which is the main institute for training teachers in the Sichuan province. I've been told that the level of students is fairly advanced. There are two PVCs there right now and one of them is leaving (the one I am replacing). So I will go there this Sunday or Monday and while others are taking thirty or forty hour train rides I will take a thirty or forty minute bus ride.

In the picture you can see me standing in the center being told my assignment. If you look closely in the background you can see the red towel (or whatever it is).

Trouble in Paradise?

The day before we find our site, we had a little discord break out among the ranks. It involved the fact that we are scheduled to take a bus into town and meet with the other PCVs tomorrow at the hotel where we originally stayed in Chengdu and be given our site postings there. A number of volunteers were planning on staying in town and going out with some of the people they hadn't seen in a while. I was going to stay in town myself, but mainly to do some shopping. When the announcement event had originally been described to us, we had been told that after the announcement we were to return to Chengdu University and our host families for dinner. A lot of people just took that as a suggestion and as I said were planning on staying in town. We found out today that we have not only been requested but required to come back to Chengdu University after the announcement and not to stay in town. And people were not happy.

In one sense, this is rather silly. I mean, we are only requested to go back to campus. We could get off the bus, turn around and get right back on a bus going into town. So even the requirement only makes it more inconvenient to get into town and does not prevent people from doing so. Plus there is the whole thing about letting adults do what they want. In another sense, I see Peace Corps point--and agree with it. It was explained to us that Peace Corps philosophy is inconsistent with large groups of Americans roaming foreign lands. That is exactly the opposite message that Peace Corps is trying to send. It is about individuals going out and making a different sort of impression than your average American overseas. Large groups of PCVs out drinking are not different than any other large groups of Americans, and there is truly nothing I run away from more overseas than a large group of Americans. And Peace Corps is certainly within its right to discourage this sort of activity, and not to be seen to facilitate it. If large groups of PCVs decide to do so on their own, well, that's their decision and says more about them and Peace Corps is not implicated in the process. So I think it makes sense for Peace Corps to not want to facilitate such actions.

I had a somewhat similar situation explained to me at a mediation retreat at the Shambhala Mountain Center. During the retreat, we were required to eat meals in silence in the large dining hall. Many of the participants were about the same age as many of the PCVs and wanted a more lively lunch hour. It was explained that when the retreat first began years ago participants would eat together and there would be raucous noise and loud converstaions, and that when people went back for afternoon meditation, well, the energy was all wrong. Just so here, to hang out with large groups of Americans is something that we would probably want do to but probably something we should be prevented from doing for the sake of the program. There is an attitude and an way of being in a foreign land that Peace Corps is attempting to engender, and it shouldn't be shy about pushing it.

The state of things

Pretty much everyone is awaiting Wednesday, the day of the big announcement, when we will find out where we will be headed for the next two years. Just to remind everyone of the situation, there are approximately sixty PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in Chengdu right now at three different sites, with approximately twenty at each site. To be precise, there are fifty-eight. We started out with sixty-one, but three have gone back to the States. Actually ours is the only one of the three sites not to lose a volunteer, though I attribute that more to chance than to anything about this particular group. Wednesday, we will all get together at the hotel in Chengdu and be given our assignments. Actually, those of us who are at Chengdu University already know quite a bit. We've been told that 15 of us will be going to Chongqing, which is about a four hour bus ride from here. One of us will stay in Chengdu and another four will be sent to locations in the Sichuan Province, which is the province that Chengdu is located in (You might want to think as the province as something like a state and the sity of Chengdu as a city in Sichuan Province). I am almost certain to go to Chongqing because they want to place me with the most advanced students and those would be in the big city, Chongqing. Once I find out for certain I will provide more information on Chongqing, but the short story is that it is a big, big city, which has its plusses and minuses.

So with model school over we now fill our afternoons with various meetings and discussions, as well as lose one hour of lunch (we used to start the afternoon session at 2:30 and now we start at 1:30). Today we just discussed how model school went in the first part of the afternoon and in the second part of the afternoon we discussed various unusual and perhaps uncomfortable situations we might find ourselves in as American volunteers: from being asked to tutor the children of various superiors and being given gifts as incentives to having fried snake pushed onto our plate during a banquet. There are two main concepts one needs to keep in mind in all interactions. The first is "mainzi," or face (or we might better understand as honor). One has to keep in mind, for example, that if someone invites you to dinner, or asks you to give a lecture, they lose face if you just flat turn them down. If you don't want to go, come up with a reasonable excuse. If you are playing a competitive sport, you have to realize there is probably much more at stake in terms of honor for them than for you. In the classroom as well, students are very conscious of face, and while embarrassment might work as a tool in the American classroom it is definitely not the thing to try over here. The other important notion is "guanxi," which is essentially "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.'' And the fact of the matter is that his is how things get done here (and probably anywhere, actually).. You will be doing favors for people as a way of storing up guanxi that you can then call in. We all remember the scene at the start of The Godfather where the undertaker comes to ask Don Corleone to help him avenge his daughter's being dishonored, and Don Corleone remarks how the undertaker has never visited him or invited him over. The Don then offers to do the deed but reminds the undertaker that one day he may well be called on to do the don a favor (and he does, when Sonny gets killed). Anyway, one would do well to keep that scene in mind, I think.

Class photo

Today was the last day of model school. I almost didn't go because I seem to have gotten this viurs that is going around and am not feeling well. It was more a desire not to have to deal with the consequences of missing a session rather than any great need to say goodbye to the students that was my prime motivation for getting out of bed. But I was very glad I made the effort. We began this last class by giving out certificates for attendance--even though we gave an exam and quiz grades were never really an issue. And this was not a class anyone was taking for credit; these students were middle school teachers primarily there to improve their English skills and perhaps learm some teaching techniques. After the certificates were handed out it was picture time. This it turned out seemed to be a bigger deal than the certificates. After taking a few group photos, everybody seemed to want to get a picture with the teacher. We thought we would cut down the time by having half take a picture with each of us, but it turned out everyone wanted their picture taken with both and then someone got the bright idea of having their picture taken with both of us and everyone jumped on that bandwagon. It was quite a hoot to be that in demand. We invited some students to the campus teahouse afterwards and about half a dozen came but they seemed most interested in having some issues of pronunciation clarified and it made me wish I'd done more of this in class. In particular, they were curious about how to pronounce certain phonetic symbols. Unless you are a linguist you are probably not familiar with our phonetic symbols. But if you look in any decent dictionary you will see next to the word some funny looking symbols that actually tell you how to pronounce the word. We don't really need this because we all know how to pronounce words, but for someone learning the language these symbols are the key, and the students could not believe I did notknow what an inverted 'e' (one phonetic symbol) stood for or how it sounded. I had to get them to show it to me in a word. They also mentioned how structured the educational system is here at least at the level they teach and they appreciated the fact that our Western teaching methods emphasized more discussion than lecture. But since most of them haver around sixty students per class they said that this was not a realistic teaching strategy for them. So even though my university class was cancelled and I truly regret not having the opportunity to finish out that class it was a real eye opener to spend some time with these young middle school teachers.

Last model school class

Today was my last day to teach. Tomorrow is their test and Friday we just give them certificates for participation. So I thought I would finally pull out something philosophical. I put together a group of ethical dilemmas which the students had to resolve in some way. That is, they were given an ethical situation, given three alternative ways of resolving it, asked to decide on one of those and then to "role play" their solution, that is, put together a little play inw which they performed their solution. So, for example, in one of the dilemmas a person discovers that her married friend is having an affair, and must determine what to do. Does she (a) just keep quiet, (b) secretely inform the husband about the affair, or (c) confront the friend. They decided to confront the friend and put on a great role play in which this occurs. In general, I was amazed at how good they were at these role plays and how much they seemed to enjoy it. In this case, the woman confronts her friend, though, and the friend refuses to stop. What do you do next, I asked, and the woman said, "It's none of my business." Afterward they explained that most people in China would simply ignore it but in this case it was a best friend. And it struck me this was probably what would happen in the states. In another situation, a customer received too much change back from a clerk who had been nasty to her. It was relly incredible the way they played up their parts here and I wished I had it on tape. The "clerk" was on her cell phone when the customer came up and just continued to talk while the customer waited patiently. When I asked if this happens they all sais yes. In the play, the customer gives the money back but the clerk is reformed by the action and vows to be nicer to customers. I wanted to push the point that one cannot rely on moral actions having such beneficial consequencs, but I think that itself would take another class, if it would be possible at all.

Lunch

Not much going on here today. It was not my teaching day. So, for lack of a better subject I will talk about lunch. Actually, I usually pack my lunch. I'm ashamed to say it is often a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. (I can get both skippy peanut butter and some decent bread at a French based store known as "Carfour."). I buy a yogurt at a little shop on campus and usually head to the break room to eat my lunch and lesson plan in the two hours between the end of language class and the start of model school. I am trying to break my stomach in gently. I will occasionally venture outside of the bounds of campus, but I have limited myself mainly to beef noodle soup (niu rho mian) or baozi, a sort of steamed bun with meat in the middle (four for about 12 cents). But todayI tried a new place lured by a vegatarian friend who said the place had great vegetables. The restaurants outside of campus look pretty much the same. There are no doors or windows, just an opening in the building withe a few tables set up inside and a few outside. Here, however, we were allowed to go into the kitchen and see the vegetables laid out neatly on trays. There were about twelve types of vegetables, some of which I recognized, some which I did not. The five of us ordered four dishes of vegetables: some strips of tofu, some soy beans, some peppers, and a tomato egg dish. I forgot, though, that unless you specifically tell them not to add meat every dish will come with meat. So our vegetarian experience turned into a meat and vegetarian experience (with plenty of rice of course). The bill for all the food and five beers came to about seventy-five cents apiece, which is about typical out here.