Further life and times of *liltayinchina*

…is the name of a famous Chinese opera song. The above title is the only line of English in the song and when we go to KTV with Winnie, she always sings it – letting us do the English part.

I’m about to spend my first night in Beijing with four more to follow. May 1st is a holiday in China with the week following off for children and government officials, and in that wake, foreign teachers also.

My dear friend and old roommate, Bianca, is arriving in Beijing tomorrow afternoon, just a few short hours after my own arrival. I’m mostly packed – it’s midnight – and that’s just about normal for me. I can’t remember a departure’s eve when I was in bed before morning. I think I’ve rarely gotten more than four hours of sleep before every plane ride I’ve ever taken (since leaving for college, that is).

So, I’m about to have a quintessential Chinese experience – the Forbidden City, Peking duck, Tiananmen Square, the GREAT wall, Beijing bars, etc, etc. I have nothing to say now, which will make my vast words after the trip all the more expressive…unless I have the same cat-got-my-typing-fingers disease as with the Yunnan trip. Eep!

One bit of interesting news for this entry though: Christy, my capable and gifted co-teacher for 1st grade told me tonight, in a bit of heart-to-heart venting that she is a party member – meaning she is a member of the Communist Party – a difficult membership to obtain, especially for one so young (she’s 27). I was fascinated and felt as if I was hearing the words of someone from two decades ago when she spoke of it. Apparently, she is the first party member to work in the English department at our school. She is held in very high regard and therefore judged against a very high set of standards – many of which usually feel inconceivable. I can’t wait to get back to Wuhan and discuss this part of her life with Christy. She seemed almost embarrassed to talk about it.

Earlier today, Eileen and I were finishing up breakfast in the office, as were many of the Chinese co-teachers, when the Principal stormed in. He pivoted slowly in the center of the room with an accusatory finger pointing in the direction of each co-teacher. He squawked out something unintelligible to Eileen or I, but the tone made up for the unknown words. He was extremely angry. He stalked out of the room and I looked at Christy and then at Sandra, who is the leader of all of the co-teachers. They had their heads down and their actions became nervous and distracted. Ivy, a co-teacher who sits by the door, shut it immediately, only to have to open it again when someone started banging irrationally on it. The Principal marched back into the room, pointing some more and followed by Mrs. Li. She looked completely distraught. They left as quickly as they had entered and the silence that took a choke-hold on the office remained until a senior teacher from one of the other offices came to complain to Sandra of the Principal’s irrational behavior. Apparently, he was furious that the English department felt it didn’t have to follow the rules “clearly” laid out by the school, aka him, and wanted to punish the department for eating breakfast during work time. He had arrived at 8:25am. Classes don’t start until 8:40am and most of the teachers in the office – especially the ones who had been eating, didn’t have class first period. It was an obvious ploy to create scapegoats. Eileen and I were sure that, had we not been there, a very uncomfortable scene would have unfolded in the office.

This morning’s events mixed with Christy’s growing responsibilities and the increasing irrationality of the Principal became too much for her to handle and she asked to talk with me after Kindergarten this evening. It was an hour and a half therapy session and I learned a lot. I am too tired and unfocused the lay it all out tonight, but I think there is something really fundamental about human relationships in what occurred between Christy and I tonight and I want to try to put it in words when I get back from Beijing. Until then, it’s BEIJING, baby, BEIJING!

Posted by liltayinchina at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

 

I've got short videos of my students up on YouTube.

I want to film each of my 90 first graders and then make one DVD of the interviews along with photos from the year and songs we learned to sing, etc. Then, I'll make copies for each student and send them to Christy to hand out at the beginning of next year.

I've uploaded all of the interviews, so far on the YouTube site:

http://www.youtube.com/LillisTaylor

Enjoy! 

Posted by liltayinchina at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's so strange how things often happen in pairs. You feel bad about an interaction, and as you're mulling over what you could/should/would have done differently, another opportunity presents itself and HOPEFULLY, you make a different choice. I guess it isn't that strange. My father TOTALLY believes in synchronicity and such. I however, think the high population (and thus the many opportunities to run into people and make mistakes in those interactions) has more to do with it...that and the fact that I rarely learn a lesson once.

This evening, after Kindergarten, I chose to take a bus home instead of taking the car that is provided to us. I had some errands to run and didn't want to make it home and then head back out, feeling that the inertia often caused by my apartment mixed with my exhaustion wouldn't let me leave once getting in for the evening.

I walked somewhat quickly to the stop and was only there for a moment when the 609 drove up, much less crowded than usual. Because of the crush of humanity that is usually on the 609, I often wait for the 573. I got on the 609 and the driver started off before both of my feet were in the bus, the door slamming shut on my backpack. His urgency caught up with him mere minutes later when he boldly drove through a red light (not only driving through, but taking a left-hand turn) and was flagged down by a traffic cop on foot. The traffic cop was a rare dandy in his perfectly pressed uniform, little white hat, white gloves and gleaming patent leather shoes. The bus driver pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, grunted as he rose out of his well-worn seat, adjusted his belt and trousers and then, with a defiant spit preceding him, left the bus to confront the cop.

All of us on the bus were held in time. No one moved or made a sound of disapproval or annoyance. Everyone just sat there, lost in the 5 to 6pm reverie. A few people collected around the bus on the street and sidewalk to watch the confrontation between dandy cop and crotchety driver. The cop issued a ticket and the driver gave up his hysterics for surliness and then, resignation. He pocketed his citation and returned to his slumped-in seat, started the engine, and for good measure, flew forward with a jerk that sent all of us standing passengers lurching forward.

My attitude at this point in the day and based on earlier experiences was one tinged with pique. I had felt like a circus animal at the post office when two girls in their early twenties had decided to stand gaping while I carried out a transaction to purchase a box large enough to fit the already boxed and addressed gift I was sending to my mother. Every few minutes, one of them would stare at me and then confer with her friend about goodness knows what. They stood dumbfounded all the way up to the point where I was putting my change in my wallet and collecting my belongings to move to the next counter to mail the box in a box.

And, Kindergarten had been especially ridiculous today. The co-teacher left for chunks of time and when I tried to get the students to repeat the words that I was saying that they didn’t know the meaning of, a litany of “ting bu dongs” would issue forth from their toothless mouths. It was like hearing a Philip Glass symphony put to Chinese words. Yes, just as “pleasant” as that sounds.

So I wasn’t in the right mood. It’s very important what kind of mood you’re in when you live in a foreign country and don’t speak the language so well. If you run into an acquaintance, your mood can make or break the encounter. Today, I broke an encounter.

We had just come to the hustle-bustle area of the Wuchang train station, mainly bustling and hustling because of a huge revamping project that’s under construction. I was standing at the back door of the bus and was lost in the double protection of my MP3 player and my sunglasses. I was staring straight at the person approaching me from the front of the bus and yet I didn’t see him until he was a few inches from my face and talking to me. He wore a denim fishing hat (has a shortish flouncy brim surrounding the perimeter of the hat), a denim vest, and denim jeans. He carried a large leather man-purse. His face was round and jovial, with a thick black beard reminding me of how rare a beard of that volume is in China. He was an acquaintance. The first time I met this man, I was smooshed into the crush of humanity I’ve mentioned before in connection to the 609. He was trying to find a space for himself and we made eye contact. I laughed out loud at the ridiculous wedged shape I had become and later, when the crowd thinned a bit, he struck up a mainly one-sided conversation with me. He handed me a business card and used to hang out in front of the school at lunchtime – occasionally we met there. I never went anywhere with him, though he asked me to have dinner or lunch to talk about art (I’d told him about my painting class). I hadn’t seen him in over two months. I’d never spoken with him for more than ten minutes or so and had never sought him out. So when he started talking to me on the bus this evening, in the state I was in, I was abrupt. I didn’t try to understand his questions and didn’t even remove the earphone when he asked me simpler and simpler questions. Finally, looking dejected, he shrugged and pointed out a seat in the back of the bus, offering it to me. I went back to the seat and sat down. He didn’t look back towards me once during the rest of the ride. At his stop, he looked back and gave me a very sad smile. I felt really bad, as if I’d hurt his feelings terribly. Although I was in no mood to try to be sociable, there are cues you can give in your own language to inform a person of your lack of energy or whatever. But, I had been short with him and cold so that he wouldn’t try to talk to me because I had no other way of showing him that I wasn’t in the mood to chat. It felt terrible and very unlike me.

But I was given a second chance, and the very same day, no less! There’s a young woman whose English name is Selena and she works at the Kindergarten connected to this school where we live. I met her very early on. She was having dinner one evening in September with her friends at the local hole-in-the-wall that just isn’t the same since “mama and papa” moved out during the Chinese New Year holiday. Selena immediately caught my eye because she’s very tall, very energetic and funny. She is just 19 this year and loves to sing Britney Spears’ songs – especially “Not a girl, not yet a woman”. Selena likes to smack me across the face as if she were kissing in the French style whenever she sees me or says goodbye to me. She doesn’t kiss, though. She bangs her cheekbone into mine and always leaves a bruise, I kid you not.

Tonight I got a double smack because I haven’t seen Selena since before the February holiday. She was leaving the Kindergarten as I was coming back from the grocery store tonight. She smacked me in the face with her cheeks and then asked me to come see her “gong zuo difang” – literally “work place”. What’s great about Selena and I, is that we know about the same amount of each other’s language. So sentences going back and forth have equal parts Chinglish and Englese. I walked with her to the Kindergarten, which had the word “Montessori” written underneath the Chinese characters for the name of the school. Though I’ve heard of Montessori schools all my life, it wasn’t until tonight that I learned that the word is the last name of the creator of the philosophy – Maria Montessori (of Italy) – that young children should be schooled through developing natural interests and activities rather than using formal teaching methods.

Selena took me to her classroom and played a few fancy piano tunes for me, danced around the room and played a traditional Chinese flute. I could tell that the school’s curriculum suited her very well. She loves to perform and her ways are childlike and I imagine, very invigorating for her young charges.

It only started to get awkward when Selena dug out an old digital camera and started forcing me to pose for pictures. “Stand in front of this – what is it in English? Yes, frog. Stand by the frog. Can you say ‘girrup, girrup?’ That’s what a frog says. Sat what a frog says.” – Snap and the shutter caught me making Chinese frog sounds.

“Can you play the piano? Sit at the piano. Put your hands on the piano. Look at me. Look at the camera but try to play the piano. Don’t play, just smile. Be cute.” Snap, snap.

Then there were the pictures she took of us, where she made me stand in front of her because her “face is fat” and I have a small head (according to her) so I would balance the picture out by being in the foreground. Snap, snap.

I noticed that in all of the photos, I look uncomfortable, tired and foggy. Selena asked me if I was going to “play” tonight. I told her no, that I was too tired to play. She told me that she was not tired and that she loved life. Could there really be so much difference between 19 and almost-27 years?

After a few more shots around the classroom, she put the camera away and started serenading me with Britney medleys of her own concoction. I told her that one day soon, we will go to KTV and sing Britney songs. I doubt that this will ever happen, but just the fact that I went along with her to see her Gong zuo difang made her supremely happy and what took so little effort on my part seems to have been all that she wanted this evening.

And so I think…Redemption! (Though I still feel badly about denim-hat man. Of course, I plan on avoiding the 609 for the duration of my stay…that’s how tired I seem to be these days…)

Posted by liltayinchina at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t know a thing about economies or the construction business. These topics are important, especially in my chosen field of sustainable design, and so one day I hope to know more. I know even less about these topics in relation to China’s monstrous development. But I’ll tell you what I do know and then I’d like to ask some potentially naïve questions, with the aim of reaching, at least, a common sense consensus.

I know that it rained for about three days straight last week. I know that last fall, my apartment, namely the thin, gray “floor covering” in the bedroom was soggy from some undiscovered leak either in the pipes or coming from external water sources. I know that one day I found a living fungus rooted firmly in the floor covering last fall and that I kept getting ill.

Like I said before, I know that it rained a lot last week. I mention this again because the leak is back. Not only is the rug soggy all along the wall in between the door to the apartment and my standing air conditioner unit in the opposite corner, but there is a smallish lake (or bog since the mosquitoes have returned) outside of my apartment and it pools against the wall sort of where the drainage pipe is for my kitchen sink, my bathtub and my washing machine. But I’ve used these three appliances throughout the winter and not a drop of water would I encounter in the rug or outside the apartment. Obviously, it did rain a couple of times this winter but the spring rains have been heavier and longer. Could the water be dripping through some hole on the roof and slowly but surely collecting under my floor covering? I don’t know and most likely won’t know because the repair work done when we report a problem is shady at best.

Sometime in January, I opened the sliding window in my bedroom only to find that it wouldn’t shut all the way when I was ready to keep the bugs (and birds) out. I tried shutting it everyday, thinking that I could outsmart its stubbornness. When Mike arrived and we were about to set off for two weeks, I sought his manly strength but the window’s stubbornness held out. So the window remained open during my vacation. Upon returning, I informed the school of the problem and a rough and tumble female groundskeeper arrived with a screwdriver. She banged half-heartedly on the window frame for a few minutes, then shouted at it in Chinese and finally managed to shut it with some serious metal-bending efforts with the screwdriver. She tsk-tsked me when I made the motion as if to open it again and said in Chinese, “No use. No good. Bad window. No use.”

I remember the slight feeling of suffocation that occurred as she uttered those short phrases, and with time, I’ve gotten downright itchy at night, knowing I can’t open that window. Around March, I stopped using the heating function of my air conditioner, but the room was so stale and airless, that I started using the fan function. Funny thing, trapped air. Even when a device is used to move it around, it remains stale and stifling, it’s just louder.

For those of you pulling at your collars and inadvertently moving closer to your own open windows, I’ll save you the suspense and tell you now: the window is open. I made a difficult choice the other night after arriving home from painting class to a room that smelled of boiled cabbage and stinking wet socks. I threw the window open as wide as it would go and contemplated strapping myself inside my sleeping bag and tying it down to the air conditioner unit outside of the window, in order to get away from the smells, the awful, awful smells, which you’ll be pained to know, haven’t gone away.

The room smells horrible and I don’t know from where the odor might be coming. On the one hand, there is the marshiness of the carpet. On the other, I’ve continued wearing my winter slippers to protect my feet from the marshiness and so my feet sweat and might be the stinking culprits. The soles of the slippers are slick and often I slide around on my way to the kitchen. I’ve yet to fall flat on my face, but it can’t be far off, especially if the marsh chooses not to recede.

Anyway, that’s what I know. Now, the questions in my mind begin with this one: how is it POSSIBLY economical to build a building so quickly that leaks and broken windows and falling light fixtures and overloaded circuits are a regular occurrence? And these are the problems I’ve ALONE had with my apartment. The apartments below mine, on the 2nd and 3rd floors are also plagued by leaks and Litisha’s entire mattress was waterlogged one day after a leak that had been building in her ceiling exploded through her light fixture. Can you imagine the result of such an occurrence in the middle of the night? How lucky she was that it happened while we were at school.

I suppose that it doesn’t end up costing much if the maintenance crews who are called in choose not to fix the problems, but what happens when the building really does decompose in a year? Do the cheap costs of building a shoddy building in the first place end up saving money even if you have to rebuild the building ten or twenty or fifty years earlier than if you’d done it correctly the first time? Are China’s construction teams and crews really putting up cities of this caliber of craftsmanship? What is to become of the country if so??

I have to add this. It just started raining very hard outside my window and though I am delighting in the sounds of the drops on the tree outside my window and in the thunder in the distance, I fear my marsh is going to be a full-on lake in the morning. There’s also a strong sewer smell creeping into the room and I find that with the movement of the wind, I can gauge when to breathe through my nose and when to refrain. The lights are off in my room, to ward off any mosquitoes that might be looking for a relatively dry spot out of the rain, but the light in my bathroom is still on. I can hear a crazy beetle doing haphazard laps around and around the square-shaped room. On every third or fourth lap, he slams into a shiny tile and falls to the ground. After a few moments of rest, he starts back up again. I’d go turn the light off to give him some peace, but what would he do to entertain himself then??

Now if you’re thinking, “Well, you aren’t usually in your apartment all day long”, I’ll tell you another story of toxification. In this story, replace mould with very nasty chemicals and retain the image of my over-worked immune system, hence the sleepy, sleepy Lillis.

The school has been preparing for a very important review for over two weeks now. An official all the way from the Beijing Department of Education will be visiting the school this coming Thursday. The official’s business is to conduct a thorough review of the school and it’s practices to determine whether additional Government support of the school is warranted. As you can imagine, the school leaders have worked themselves into a frenzy of preparation. The acting principal is new this year and so it is especially important that he, and the school make a good impression. With these pressures in mind, he has been going around ordering the most ridiculous “beautification” acts to be carried out. My favorite (I can say this now, since I’m still alive) was the painting of the metal bars on all of the office windows a shiny silver color. I can’t help but imagining the important official walking no closer than 100 meters from the bars and pausing in his walk to say, “Oh my graciousness, this school is so worthy of our additional funds: your iron bars gleam as if they were made of real shiny silver!”

Let me paint a picture for you:

It is Monday and the students are marching to the field for the morning exercise. The English teachers are relegated to the office and peer out at the students on the field through their office-prison bars. Just a few feet away, a young man who’s life expectancy is most likely not past thirty, stands atop a wooden ladder, delicately daubing the most toxic smelling potion (and as a graduate of an Industrial Design program, this is no small claim, what with late nights of cuddling up to Bondo, epoxy, and spray paint) onto the iron bars. In fact, I’m surprised the silver paint didn’t eat right through the bars given the nature of the smell. Fifteen minutes locked in the room and I couldn’t keep my eyes open, much less blink past the tears that my body was producing because it was in shock. Matt kept saying, “I think I’m high.” Someone else threw up in her mouth. It was disgusting. After another twenty minutes, my head was reeling from a massive headache and I retreated to the courtyard to get away from the most intense of the paint fumes. In the courtyard, the loudspeaker was blaring and the techno-pop music that the students are required to do calisthenics to each morning was pounding along to the beat of my headache. I was ready to call it quits. The painting lasted for another two days and I was indignant at having to suffer through the torturous results to my health.

It shocks me that something like this could occur at a public facility where thousands of people work – are required to work – each day. What haunts me is the fact that the principal felt the shiny bars were more important than the potential health impacts to the students that had to suffer just as we did for those days.

The “beautification” is continuing at a frantic pace now that Thursday is almost upon us and some other ridiculous things have been occurring: during Kindergarten on Thursday, a man relentlessly scrapped the rust-paint concoction off of the huge metal door of the room while I tried to conduct class. The students were delighted with the chaos and I even saw several of them running around with large paint chips after class. During my 2B class on Wednesday, three young men spent the first fifteen minutes of class re-shoeing the chairs and desks (for lack of a better word). They stuck rubber scuff-be-gone “shoes” on legs where the old shoes were missing and bashed them into place with rubber mallets. Julia had a look of extreme consternation on her face as the children whooped and hollered with each bash. It seems that the teachers don’t see eye to eye with the principal’s demand for perfection, or maybe it’s that they expect him to do it on his own time and not on ours. My favorite disruption had to do with the PE teachers. Before the road was re-paved two weeks ago, there were hopscotch and tic-tac-toe courts among other game courts painted on the asphalt. Apparently, this charming characteristic is to be saved and the PE teachers were out hurriedly painting on the new asphalt at the end of the school day Friday. But, somewhere in the chain of command, a misunderstanding of which games were to be painted occurred and there was a huge ruckus after Kindergarten with shouting and pointing of fingers and paintbrushes when several school leaders and several PE teachers argued over which games should stay and which were unnecessary, or “wrong” for the image of the school.

Of the many things that Christy and I have talked about recently, one of them revolves around the issue of being a teacher. We both agree that if teaching were a haloed field, kept safe from politics and leadership bureaucracy, it would be a much-preferred field for many willing and enthusiastic people. For me, however, the politics make the point of the job difficult to see.

I’d do it over again and I’d never willingly leave my children, but it is hard most times and again, I want to say to my teacher friends back in the States, you are incredible people and our communities are lucky to have you and your hard work. As for me, I’m looking forward to health code regulations and marsh-less carpeting.

Posted by liltayinchina at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It is a new term, and with this new term, new regulations for the teachers have come as well. In fact, it appears that the school is tightening the screws on its foreign department even further. Mr. Ye told us at the meeting prior to the beginning of this term that there would be random drop-ins on foreign teachers by him and the English department principal, Mrs. Li, each month. We were also told that the amount of show-lessons would increase and that a super teacher would be called in to survey our work and give us critiques.

My initial reaction to these changes was a mild concern that I would be found out to be a teacher lacking in many capabilities. Then a more practical, yet pessimistic, reaction occurred which reminded me that I had only four more months of teaching at the school to look “forward” to and thus should not be too worried at the outcome of critiques of my teaching abilities.

Two Mondays ago, Julia informed me that I’d be having a show lesson that Friday. She told me that Matthew and Lisa would also have a show-lesson that day and that a super teacher would be sitting in on our lessons along with Mr. Ye and Mrs. Li. At first, Julia seemed to care very little about this show-lesson. Then, after a meeting of the Chinese co-teachers, she held meeting upon meeting with me to discuss the lesson in detail. At one point, she had me writing down, to the word, what she wanted me to say at each point. I was conflicted, on the one hand, I knew that what she was orchestrating was too formal and not like my usual teaching style. I knew that she wanted to look good and probably had my interests in mind as well, but to me, it seemed that I would learn nothing from this sort of method. If the super teachers had anything critical to say, they’d be critiquing Julia’s thought process and not my own. Yet, on the other hand, I kept thinking, I can add elements of my own style into her script and be happy with that compromise. It was frustrating and I was busy that week with Grade 1 as well, not to mention I’d come down with a sinus infection, so I let Julia dictate the organization of the lesson and the way in which things would flow, but I stopped at having her write an actual script for me. It was too ridiculous and so far from my usual teaching methods.

On the day of the lesson, I had prepared a lively assortment of teaching aides and we practiced the lesson in Class 2A, to see what worked well and what didn’t. To my amazement, Class 2A was responsive and easy to work with. Usually, they are the more unruly of the two classes, not to mention that as a whole, they seem to know less English than Class 2B.

The time came for my lesson. It was held in the classroom and the observers were late so I began without them. Any nervousness I’d felt before starting evaporated as I dug into my choreographed performance. After about seven minutes of class, a man and woman I’d never seen before entered the back of the classroom and sat down. Along with them, Mr. Ye, Mrs. Li, Sandra (Ellie’s mother and Matthew’s co-teacher), and several of the other Chinese co-teachers entered the room and sat down. Class was going well but we weren’t having much fun. I was so busy making sure I followed each of Julia’s steps that a couple of times, I failed to joke with the children or test their memory as I usually do in class. It was frustrating to be so concerned with a plan and to not focus on the CHILDREN. Somewhere in the middle of class, I became disillusioned with the plan and with Julia’s intentions and lost my way. Earlier in the day, I’d thought that it would be an interesting, though mildly traumatizing lesson, to throw a teacher into a classroom without his or her teaching aides, the plan or any other supplements and see how they would do stripped bare of all the flashy accoutrements that the Chinese teachers seem to hold in such high regard.

I’d done a good job in my performance, but there were still about five minutes of class time left. I asked the students to take out their books and walked to the back of the classroom to play the cassette so I could be out from under the microscope for a few minutes. When I got to the back of the classroom, I saw that the woman in charge of handing out lunch to the children had moved the tape player and it was nowhere to be seen. I returned to the front of class and was about to play a game with the students when Julia gave me a knowing look that said, “NO GAMES!” So I fumbled with the text on the page and asked some questions that made little sense to the children. I noticed that the observers had long stopped paying attention to me and were writing up notes or glancing at their watches wondering when class would be over. At that point the bell rang and I sighed with relief. I went up to the board to remove my teaching aides and the children dashed to the same spot and played with the various pictures while waiting for lunch to be served.

The man I’d never seen before came up and introduced himself as the son of the super teacher. He was very handsome and his English was easy and without accent. He asked if it was “Miss” or “Mrs.” Taylor and then proceeded to give me some notes from his observations. He said I had beautiful handwriting and that I was extremely organized and confident in front of the children. He also liked my teaching aides. Yet, he felt my lesson was too much “by the book” and that I should use my strength as a native speaker to help the students create dialogs with each other. He also felt that too much had been presented and that more practice was needed. I thanked him for his time and we parted ways.

It was encouraging to have positive reinforcement of my strengths, but I felt that I couldn’t take his critiques of my teaching to heart because the methods had not been my own. I thought this was the end of the matter and then this past Thursday we had a meeting.

All of the foreign teachers and all of the Chinese co-teachers were convened in the auditorium and the super teacher and her son were introduced to us. It was made clear that the super teacher would give a summary of her findings from the three foreign classes she had attended and that her son would translate. It was odd. She began by telling us that the foreign language books that we taught from were difficult and poorly planned whereas the English language books written by Chinese and taught by our Chinese co-teachers were much better for the teaching of a foreign language. And this information was no news to us but especially useless since we were not the ones who had any say in which teaching materials the school chose to use. In fact, several teachers in the past have urged the school to choose different materials because Chatterbox is so poorly laid out. After that awkward introduction to her “super-ness”, the super teacher critiqued the three lessons she’s seen. She felt that Lisa was vibrant and fun in her class, yet didn’t teach enough material in the 40 minutes during which she hammed it up with her fifth graders. The super teacher liked Matthew’s easy style with the children and the various games he employed during class but felt that the information was too difficult for his third graders and that easier examples of the language points should have been taught as well. Mine was her least favorite of the three lessons she’d seen, though she commented on my “graceful youth” and looked as if she would have liked to squeeze my cheek. She said that I was too rigid and should speak “normally” – I’m assuming she meant, “informally” – with my students and try harder to drill key grammar points using fresh approaches. Outwardly, I nodded and thanked her for her thoughts, inwardly, I was fuming that I’d been so passive when Julia dictated the lesson to me.

An entertaining interaction with the super teacher’s son occurred just after his mother's presentation of our faults during our classes. When it was time for the foreign teachers to leave the meeting so that the super teacher could critique our Chinese counterparts in her own language, the super teacher’s son pulled me aside and said, “I will come to Seattle to teach Chinese.” I smiled, surprised, and said, “Okay!” Later, it was mentioned to me that this might have been a “come-on”. Of course, I’ve been out of practice this past year and have no idea what a come-on is anymore, let alone a better word for "come-on". I just thought he was telling me that he’d be in Seattle at some point in the future. In any case, the co-teachers, especially Christy, like to joke with me now about how I have a Chinese suitor in the form of a super teacher’s son.

Now, you may be wondering, “Wait, when did all of this happen?” and I’ll tell you. This was all prior to my meltdown with Julia. In fact, right after the super teacher’s comments, classes with Julia went well because I felt confident as a teacher, having been chosen to “perform” for the super teacher in the first place and having been critiqued on Julia’s style and not my own.

And then everything fell apart. Since the attempted confrontation and the tea talk, Julia has been saddled with a student teacher and has had to shape up considerably in class. She translates my major lesson points almost on cue now and helps me as I’ve seen other co-teachers do, not to mention as Christy has always done since becoming my co-teacher. I wouldn’t say that everything is golden again, but it’s on the mend and since the meltdown, I’ve gained a confidence and a fearlessness around Julia which, if not positively affecting my relationship with her, has certainly improved classes and reduced the anxiety of “going it alone”.

And, since I began writing this entry on March 24th, and am now finishing it almost a month later, I feel I should amend some earlier statements. The portended tightening of the screws in regards to the foreign department appears to have been a fearsome bark with no chance of a bite. Not only have two months gone by without one look at our lesson plans, but also the drop-ins have been limited to once for some of us and never for others. Also, Christy told me some big news that impacts the future of the foreign department. I wanted to write about my talks with Christy in another entry so I’ll save that big news for later…since, after all, it doesn’t affect me…a one-time foreign teacher for the school. Oh how the co-teacher’s loathe this attitude…and, of course, for good reason. The ones who end up suffering the most, as usual, are the children. I just hope that my dedication to them during this one school year has been more helpful than harmful. I’m a firm believer in warmth and support overriding all obstacles, and so, at least, I can convince myself that I’ve done them little harm.

There’s a beetle banging around in the bathroom and I believe his suicidal flight is a perfect segue into my next entry.

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NOTE: I began this entry a little while ago and the event occurred quite a while ago, so I apologize for tense confusion and literary license with events. I’m pretty sure this is how it went, though Mike might disagree…

After getting off the train, we found a taxi driver who knew the Camellia hotel. Upon arrival at the hotel entrance at 6 o’clock in the morning, the lobby was deserted, save a semi-snoozing bellhop who sat slumped in his chair behind a desk near reception. He walkie-talkied our arrival and seconds later, a door behind reception opened and a mostly-fresh looking woman registered us and handed us a room key.

Before I go into details about the hotel room and our experience there, I’d like to mention that this hotel was registered under BUDGET SLEEPING in my guidebook and, for Mike’s sake, I had reserved a higher-end room in the establishment. We COULD have been sleeping four or eight to a room, in bunk beds and sharing a bathroom.

The lobby’s appearance instilled us with a false sense of security. The receptionist told us to exit the lobby (and the hotel) walk across the way and into Building #3 in order to find our room. We did so, and in between the lobby building and Building #3 there appeared to be a nice courtyard in the early morning light. As soon as we entered Building #3, our high spirits were hampered a bit by the smell and the encroaching wetness in the air. Being familiar with mold, mustiness and mildew, I’ve become adept at preparing for the type of onslaught such bedfellows will wreak upon you in your sleep.

We climbed the over-plush stairs and found the door with our number on it: 3224 I think it was. There was a minimal control panel-type thing to the left of the door and then a simple knob on the door itself. The key, however, was shaped like the end of a tongue depressor, only much larger and was as flat as a credit card. Now, remember, it’s only 6 o’clock in the morning and we had been on a train for 30 hours so our general understanding of the world had been dulled a bit. With that said, I must then say that I’m brilliant and figured out how to use the key without having to return to the lobby and ask for directions on its use.

The doorknob was as simple as they get. Nothing, not even a small, hidden LED, hinted that the door was magnetically locked, yet we both swiped and brushed the knob, the panel above the knob and the point where the lock was in the wall. Nothing. A couple of times I pressed the doorbell on the outside of the door – an extremely loud doorbell – and we stared and stared hard at the simple drawing markered on one side of the key fob, an actual credit card-like device. I was on my way to ask for directions when I studied the knob on our neighbor’s door. I looked underneath and there was a slot the width of our tongue depressor. I returned to our door and slide the tongue depressor into the slot. The lock unlatched and we entered our 24-hour palace.

Yuck. The stench of mildew was overwhelming. The room was on the fringes of sleaze, but it was fine. We’d been sleeping in moving beds for two nights now and were happy to sleep in still beds, at least. I showered in cold water and hid under the stinky blankets while Mike enjoyed a warm shower (still not sure what I did wrong there). Mike had this “interesting” habit of turning the TV on as soon as we arrived at a hotel and then immediately ignoring it while going about his business, which, for the rest of the trip mostly involved washing his clothes in the sink and then drying them with the complimentary hairdryer in the various bathrooms of our hotels.

INTERLUDE – I realize that by finishing the documentation of this trip, I’m giving Mike incentive to write rebuttals (and inform all of you of my odd behavior along the way), but I’m risking this potential he said/she said because he’ll be honest, at least and you, dear reader, will surely benefit.

Once we had showered and I had thawed out, we left our room and walked through the courtyard, which turned out to be the nicest part of the hostel, I’d say. We purchased plane tickets for the following morning to Lijiang and went in search of the Bank of China so that Mike could change over his US dollars. We found another bank, which was either the Construction Bank of China or the Agricultural Bank of China or the Real Brite Bank of China (no, it wasn’t that one, though I’ve always wanted to go inside of one…), and bellied up to a window. Confusion immediately ensued and the English speaking guard was asked over to oversee the transaction. I can’t remember how much money Mike was trying to exchange, but among his bills were several new $20 bills. The guard apologized profusely and said that the bank couldn’t exchange the new bills. At this point, Mike and I conferred about collecting his money and trying to find the Bank of China after all. But, the guard had gone to attend to a woman in a purple hat and the cashier had disappeared in search of the necessary form for making the transaction. Through her actions, it became apparent that the bank either had lost all of the original forms or had never had any to begin with. She tried searching for the form on the database and then printing it out but the printer wouldn’t let her. Finally, we collected Mike’s money and left the bank. After walking some more and consulting the map in my China guide (that cursed albatross of a travel guide), we found the Bank of China. We took a number and waited. It didn’t take long and I will never enter another bank other than the Bank of China while in this country. I was warned and I’ve lived the reason. The other banks might as well be called, “The Agricultural (specified business goes here) Bank of China and Therefore the Non-foreigner Bank of China”.

Next we walked a ways and found an across-the-bridge noodle shop that we think was recommended in the guidebook. It was a hole-in-the-wall and there were diners at almost every table. At the front, a small, weathered man sat at a short table with a box of money in front of him. He looked at us as if to say, “Do you want something to eat?” and I pointed to two bowls at neighboring tables. He nodded and asked about drinks. There were crates of a Fanta-like drink stacked in the corner and we each took a flavor. The noodles arrived and we ate and slurped delightedly. During the meal a sleek black cat hopped up on the cashier’s table and declared its territory. We ate quickly and after paying, moved on.

Mike was in charge of our direction. I had no clue where we were direction-wise and it mattered little to me. We walked down one leafy-tree lined road and did some window-shopping. I saw a fun skirt with circles of red, blue and black on a white background with a think navy band circling the base. The fabric was amazing to the touch but the price seemed much too high. We kept walking. We stumbled across a semi-hidden flower market, which made its presence known to me through the fragrance of the lilies often used in wedding arrangements.

The market began with exuberantly died dried flowers of all shapes and sizes. The arrangements were gaudy and over the top, but the individual flowers were really something to look at. All colors and all shapes were exploding and dripping from every nook and cranny. It was beyond colorful and the crispness of the colors almost hurt. To me, nature was barely present and I was much happier when we found the women and men bundling up large bouquets of hydrangea, lilies, roses, Gerber daises, tulips and orchids. We turned a corner and came across a man simply dressed in dark, worn clothes. As we passed him, he growled. On his head he wore a band of cloth with a flapping blue fabric fan attached to the side. We moved past him and came to an area where songbirds were trilling in various cages. We stopped to admire their songs and the man with the flapping blue fan came up and started singing to the birds in believable twitter.

Further on, it became apparent that we’d come across a throng of wedding bouquet shops. In China, on the day of a wedding, a huge procession of cars rides through the streets of a city, showing off flamboyant flower arrangements stuck to the hoods and roofs to present the wealth of the marrying families. We walk through the luxury cars, admiring the extremely crafted bouquets and I find a fallen orchid, fuchsia in color. Mike finds a fallen rosebud. Off in the distance, as we’re leaving, I see a bride standing by one of the stretch limos. She’s wearing normal clothes and she’s talking away on a cell phone. But, on her head, a white veil stays put thanks to a few hair pins, the rest of the veil fluttering in the wind as if wishing to take flight. In her hand, she carefully holds a bouquet of red roses and white lilies.

We return to our hotel, collect our plane tickets and purchase some beers in the hostel’s café/bar. We take them to the courtyard and are weighing our options for the rest of the afternoon when two Germans introduce themselves and ask to borrow the guidebook. They’re gone for thirty minutes or so and in the meantime, Mike and I enjoy our beers and the afternoon sun in the courtyard. The Germans return with the guidebook and I chat them up for awhile. It seems they’re very much into partying and eating Western food. I find out after talking with them for another thirty minutes that their room is across from ours. They suggest often that we meet up for drinking “fun” later in the evening and I make no promises. I return to the room to find Mike so that we can continue exploring Kunming.

We take a taxi to the East/West pagodas, I enjoy one of the nicest public restrooms I’ve seen in China to date and then we walk towards Greenlake, losing our way. I notice that there are a lot of beggars, especially begging children in Kunming. Many more than in Wuhan. One little boy latches on to Mike as we’re crossing the street. The boy can’t be more than four years old. He’s whimpering and not letting go. Even now, I don’t remember if we gave him money. I don’t even know how we got him off of Mike. I do know that not a single adult was coming after him.

Once we’re good and lost, having circled an area and seen little to point us in the right direction, I ask a woman who’s walking her bike uphill if she can give us directions. She says she’ll take us to the lake herself. I’m able to converse very superficially with her and my repertoire is over quickly. Traffic is at a standstill and we continue up the slight incline, following along behind her bicycle.

We come to the crest of the hill, cross a large intersection and start going down the other side of the hill. The area becomes less populated and large trees pop up to break the monotony of the concrete. The woman points to the lake down below us, we nod and thank her and she hops on her bike and pedals off. Our jaunt around the lake is brief. We snap photos in the dying light of the day and catch a taxi back to the hostel. A Yunnan dinner theater is connected to the hotel and we make it back just in time for the 6 o’clock start of the show. We’re taken to a balcony table. The lights go down and a waiter brings our food. Neither the food nor the show left much of an impression, but the theme park nature of the experience slaked my thirst for kitsch, no matter the country of origin.

And that completes our first day exploring Kunming. The evening turned into a pink-lady nightmare, but I must save that story for another day. I’ve got three classes worth of tests to grade and it’s already 11:23pm, Sunday night. Nothing like procrastinating on one thing to end procrastination of another. So is life. (My life, at any rate.)

Posted by liltayinchina at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling pretty rotten. I was frustrated about my classes and even more so by the news that a co-teacher might be disappointed with my performance. When last I wrote, I spoke of a maturing of self that actually led to me confronting the aforementioned co-teacher. Here’s a brief paraphrasing of the events as they unfolded three Fridays ago:

Thursday afternoon
Me: “Julia, can we talk about my teaching methods? I’d like to go somewhere private where we may talk.”
Julia: “Um, okay.”
Me: “How about tomorrow during lunch.”
Julia: “Um…….o…..kay.”
Me: “Uh, okay….thanks.”

Next day – class goes absolutely rottenly. I have first and second periods with the 2nd graders. Julia seems displeased with life in general and after the second disastrous class, I say, “I’m glad we’re going to talk about this today.” Julia responds with, “….sure….”

Then, she asks if we can have our meeting at 4th period instead of lunch. I say sure. I tell her I’ll come to her office at the beginning of 4th period to talk. I take off for the break room and sleep for thirty minutes, thanks to a general feeling of illness creeping over my body that began around 1st period.

I go to her office just as the 4th period bell is ringing and she forces fake smiles and small talk, saying she’s hot and tired. She asks dubiously where I think we should go off campus and I suggest the places that I know she usually likes to go to: McDonalds or KFC, she replies that it is hot and that she is tired. She asks if we can stay in her office. I only suggested leaving campus in the first place in order to get some neutrality between us so that I could gently confront her about the rumors I’ve heard. I’m in no need of personal affirmation from Julia, I just want to put a stop to the talking behind my back and get started with turning my Grade 2 classes around.

I concede to her request of staying on campus. I sit down and get the ball rolling immediately:

Me: “Julia, I have to make some changes. Things are not going well in my classes. Don’t you agree?”
 -- and here’s where everything became ridiculous --
Julia: “Do you like tea? I want to make some tea.”
Me: “Okay, sure. Don’t you think classes are going really bad right now?”
Julia: “My favorite tea is this tea. Smell it. It is good tea. Do you like to smell this tea?”
Me: “The tea smells good. What do you see as being the problems with my classes right now? Like, 2A, what is wrong with 2A, do you think?”
Julia: “It really is very hot today. 2A doesn’t like to learn.”
-- Now at this point, you can imagine, I was ready to give up the fight. Here’s a woman who has been passive-aggressively withdrawing from all aspects of her duty in my classes and yet, when I fully accept that the problem might be all on my shoulders, she ignores the opportunity to discuss the situation in the apparent hopes that if she tempts me with many tea smells in a small, hot office, I’ll forget my silly notions of improving our daily two hours of class time with each other and languidly disappear in the afternoon haze, leaving her to her own quiet brooding.  

But I didn’t give up the fight. Not just yet.

Me: “Julia, don’t you see that things have changed since before the holiday? Things were good. Classes went well, the students were eager; you and I worked well together. What do you think happened?”
Julia: “I don’t know (…said in the most exasperating perky yet dismissive way).”
Me: “Well, I feel that things have changed and if there’s anything that I need to be doing differently, I’d like to discuss it. Right now.”
Julia: “There is nothing. My tea is ready. Don’t you think it is hot today?” smile, smile, smile.

And so, there was only one thing to do. I said, “Okay. Well I’m glad we’ve talked and made sure everything is in the open. I’m sure you will tell me if there’s anything that comes to mind after this talk. Thanks for your time.”

As I left her office, I made a promise to myself not to let Julia bother me any longer. I’ve grown accustomed to the new teaching methods between us: I teach; she sulks in the back of the room. I still refuse to discipline, finding it ridiculous to get angry at a child when I can’t even tell for sure that they were doing something wrong – most likely, they were asking their seatmate, “What the heck did Lillis just say and why isn’t Julia translating that last part?” – now can I punish a child for saying something like this while I’m teaching?

The good news is that I’ve challenged myself to teach in ways where Julia’s presence is totally unnecessary. This has been quite a fun challenge. If she doesn’t want to work with my anymore, I’ll make sure that she feels as little strain as possible for having to physically be in the room at all. Daydream away, Julia.

And, just to put a little overall perspective in the mix, there’s another co-teacher who goes around praising me and my teaching skills to the other co-teachers. Her English name is Millie and she just replaced Eileen’s Grade 1 co-teacher. Millie is in her last year of University and although she came as a student teacher, two other teachers left without warning and Sandra has been asked to attend conferences all over the country for the next two months. So, Millie is now a full-time co-teacher. She taught with me a couple of times when Christy was busy or in a meeting and she sits in on at least three or four Grade 1 classes a week. She tells me after each class, “You are a very good teacher and I think I can learn a lot from you.” Eileen says that Millie rarely starts a sentence about Grade 1 without mentioning me or my classes. Granted, Millie is a new teacher and is very enthusiastic about her job so she is being optimistic and seeing the positive aspects of everyone, but it does go to show: one woman’s incompetent foreigner is another woman’s golden foreigner. Though I’d prefer to be right in the middle, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

The latest news is that Julia has a student teacher of her own and has had to change a lot of her mooning around in the back since the student teacher sticks to her every word. She even helps me in ways that she never, ever did before. It’s been a pleasant surprise. I plan to enjoy the change for as long as the student teacher is stuck with us.

Posted by liltayinchina at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)