Journal Entry - January 4, 2007
I’m always surprised when I read through my diary to make the next journal entry and find out what we’ve done since the last entry. Our lives here are so full that they begin to approach the frenetic pace of our “real” lives in the U.S. The main event since I last wrote has been the Christmas and New Year holidays. Of course, in China December 25th is officially just December 25th. The Chinese make quite a big commercial deal of the lead up to Christmas, but when the day arrives, it’s more like Valentine’s Day. It’s a day for parties and exchanging gifts with your boyfriend or girlfriend, plus maybe a few other people, like your foreign English teacher.
We had brought small bottles of home made maple syrup to give as gifts. They required a little additional processing: skimming, reheating, and recapping, which we did on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, in addition to teaching our classes, making copies, and doing all the normal activities associated with our jobs, we gave several bottles to friends and some of the people whose jobs include helping us out. That included the office staff and the Foreign Affairs Office, the staff and the Foreign Guest House, and the women who work in the copy center.
On the afternoon of the 24th there was a student recital for the music school that my erhu teacher runs. The first item on the program was the piece that he, a university student, and I had prepared for the music contest. We were followed by a number of groups and individuals doing a great variety of music on a variety of instruments. There was a group of little kids with violins, another group of kids with erhus, a classical guitarist or two, a singer who sang with a recorded background, a pianist, and many more. It was all done in a small, unheated recital hall that was packed with parents, grandparents, and classmates. The level of ability varied greatly, as did the choice of music. Many of the selections were western classical show pieces, for instance, Fuer Elise played on guitar, but at least half were traditional Chinese tunes on both western and Chinese instruments. There were people coming and going, little kids tripping over instruments, chairs, and each other, and a huge racket just outside the door made by performers tuning and warming up. It wasn’t exactly the kind of respectful concert behavior that we’re used to.
That evening, John and Chandra had a Christmas Eve party. They cooked western food (spaghetti!) and invited us and a few Chinese friends. We all a nice time. The next day, Christmas, we were invited to another party, this one given by the English majors for the English major freshmen. Being a Chinese party, it was mostly a performance. Our invitation wasn’t for hanging out and schmoozing, it was for performing. I walked into a typical noisy Chinese performance during a rendition of Happy Birthday. The word “HAPPY” was spelled out in balloon on the curtain at the back of the stage and fake snow was flying everywhere. When I asked Gina who they were singing Happy Birthday for, the answer was, of course, Jesus. Not exactly a typical Christmas carol. After that was a group that was going to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. For some reason they weren’t ready, so we were escorted on stage. We sang Silent Night to thunderous applause and then made a hasty getaway.
The next celebration, one for which the Chinese seem to have a longer tradition even though it’s completely western, is New Year’s. (The traditional Chinese New Year’s celebration is geared to the lunar calendar and will take place this year on February 18th by the western calendar. That’s the one with dragon dancing parades and firecrackers that we’re all at least a little familiar with.) We were invited out by the Foreign Affairs Office for a traditional Sichuan New Year’s eve dinner of lamb hotpot. Of course, Gina and I didn’t have hotpot, but Professor Zhang, the head of the Foreign Affairs Office, thoughtfully provided us with a plate of vegetables, and there was plenty of the type of bread that the Chinese have with lamb. There was the usual toasting and challenge drinking, which I begged off of because of a cold. My stuffed up nose also saved me from another aspect of the evening. Lamb hotpot apparently has a strong smell which Gina found hard to take.
After the meal, the entire party went to a coffee house, which in China is an upscale bar. Coffee in China is an expensive yuppie beverage. The group included two foreign students, one from Vietnam who spoke passable English as well as Chinese and a little French, and one from Japan who was completely fluent in Chinese but spoke almost no English. No one mentioned the idea of counting down to the new year and we assumed that it just wasn’t done in China. We were home and in bed by about 11:00. Then, right at midnight, we were jolted out of a sound sleep by a tremendous roar of fire works. There was apparently a minor display put on by the student union, just beyond the building next door. It was small but very loud and close to the Foreign Guest House. It was a fittingly unexpected, unexplained end to the holiday celebrations.
One of the things we want to learn to do while we’re here in China is learn to cook. Since the last journal entry, we’ve had two cooking experiences. A couple of student friends, Chen Xi and Xiao Lu, came to our apartment about two weeks ago and made a complete Chinese meal. There were a number of dishes, including soup and rice, and it was all delicious. Gina recorded the entire process with the camera. Then a few days ago, another student friend, Fay, came for lunch with her six year old son Pingping and made soup with home made noodles. She is a graduate student from Shandong, in the northeast of China, so what she did wasn’t Sichuan cooking. It was also delicious and was quite simple.
In the Chinese university system, classes don’t all meet for the same number of weeks. So although the semester doesn’t end until the middle of January, many classes end before that, some as early as the end of October. Our classes were scheduled to end in the last week of December, so we have been busy winding down, with final exams and grades. Like everything else we’ve done in China, the process has been full of surprises and we’ve had to ask many questions. Do the Chinese use the letter grades (A, B, C,...) we’re used to? (No, grades are a number from 0 to 100.) Can we use “incomplete” as a grade? (No, anyone who hasn’t completed the course fails, but grades can be changed after the fact.) How do we report grades? (On a separate sheet that we weren’t given until we asked for it.) Is there a final exam period? (Yes, but we didn’t find out about it until after we had given our final exams.) We’re learning a lot about how the system operates. I think we’ll be ready to teach just about the time that we head back to the U.S.
We’re never sure how much leeway we or the students have with regard to grades, schedules, and attendance. About the middle of December a student approached me and said that another student was working in a city some distance from Ya’an and had been unable to come to the class all semester, but wanted me to pass him anyway. He was willing to do some extra work on his own. The conversation was in halting English, so I wasn’t sure I understood completely. I said I would look into it. A week later, a well dressed man showed up at the Foreign Guest House with a car and driver. Here was my absent student, a wealthy and powerful banker. I felt like I needed to be careful. I thought the man’s request was unreasonable, but I had no idea what a Chinese professor in my position would do. I asked a couple of students about it. Their response was that this looked a little shady, but they were very careful with their words. I decided to push this issue up the organizational ladder. I met with our contact in the English department, and he and I went to the graduate school administration. To my relief, they decided not only not to grant the student’s request, but to handle the issue themselves. When I described their decision to a student friend, her response made it clear that it was lucky for me that I didn’t have to have any more involvement with the situation.
One aspect of the schedule that we were completely unaware of until right before it happened is that there are no classes for three days for the New Year's holiday. For some reason, the classes that would have happened on Tuesday, January 2nd, were held on Sunday, December 31st. The classes that would have been on Monday and Wednesday, January 1st and 3rd, were just cancelled. We were given conflicting information about this right up to Friday the 29th. Fortunately, our classes ended before the New Year’s holiday, so the schedule didn’t have much effect on us.
Since Lawrence left for Ireland in the middle of December, I’ve been teaching not only my class at the vocational school, but his as well. Since it’s just the last two classes, I’ve been playing games, singing songs, and handing out candy. For the most part it works just as well with nineteen year olds as it does with five year olds. The only difference is that I still have to take away a cell phone now and then. It has been a lot of fun teaching the vocational school students. My last class with them is later today. I don’t know whether they’ll want foreign teachers next term (I don’t think they know either) but I hope they do.
The next semester doesn’t begin until March 1st, so we have two months off. It’s cold in Ya’an. (I know, daily highs in the 50’s may not sound very cold, but remember, there is very little indoor heat here.) So we’ve decided to head south. Here is our tentative itinerary: We’re off to Vietnam today. It will take us three or four days to get there, mostly by train. We’ll spend some time just seeing the sights before heading to Thailand via Cambodia on boats, buses, mopeds, or whatever else we can find. After about a week, we’ll either return to China for the next stage of the music competition that began last November, or we’ll fly to India. We’ll keep you posted.