2-11-09
I leaned over to my nightstand and turned off my alarm clock. It was 7 a.m., and Lady Hangover had her ax lodged in my skull again. I set my feet on the cold linoleum floor and grabbed a bottle of water off the table. I drank it all, my eyes closed. Setting the empty bottle back on the table, I looked at the clock.
“Six o’clock in Pittsburgh,” I thought, “Just sitting down to dinner.”
I’ve been living in China since August, and I still automatically figure out what time it is in Pittsburgh every time I check my watch, cell phone or clock. It’s more of a way to honor my loved ones – to briefly imagine what they’re doing at that moment – than it is me longing to return home. Fact is I’m not the homesick type. The only times I’ve ever been homesick were when the Steelers beat the Ravens to clinch the AFC Championship, when the Steelers played in and won Super Bowl XLIII in dramatic fashion, and when Randy Taylor quit his job and returned to America my third week here. Other than that, you couldn’t pay me to leave China.
Editor’s note: The author is well aware that two of the times he was homesick involved him wishing he was drinking his face off on East Carson Street on the South Side of Pittsburgh and had nothing to do with him missing his family. He was surrounded by so many friends on Thanksgiving and Christmas, added with the experience of spending the holidays in China, that the season was particularly easy – correction – enjoyable.
I looked out my kitchen window and ate breakfast: one banana, one apple and four pieces of bao zi. There is no English translation that I know of for bao zi. They’re dough balls with meat or vegetables inside. It’s a traditional Chinese breakfast food. Not exactly healthy, but Chinese people believe that one should eat greasy, carbohydrate-laden foods for breakfast, and then spend the rest of the day burning those calories. Fried noodles are a staple of early morning dining. Apples, bananas, oranges – Chinese people won’t go near such healthy food before lunch. I’ve even witnessed some of my students eating convenient store hot dogs before first period. … Laugh if you want, but they’re the skinnier nation, at least for now, anyway. McDonald’s and KFC are in the process of Fixing this.
I got dressed – business casual – grabbed my flash drive, another bottle of water, and headed across campus for class. In Pittsburgh, the weather that day would be considered a warm spring morning. In Shenzhen, it was normal, maybe even a bit chilly. Students were wearing long sleeves and pants. There are no halls in the class buildings. The doors to the classes lead to the outside, with decks on the upper floors. I rounded the corner of the administration building and saw that some of the students from the ground floor classrooms had lined their desks in a row outside.
This is what they do when there’s standardized testing, and I don’t have to teach when there’s standardized testing.
I grabbed one of the English teachers, a nice lady. I helped her write a speech in November and ever since, she’s been giving me homemade spicy food at lunch that makes my anus burn when I shit. I usually try to avoid her.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Testing,” she said. “Junior level take examinations today and tomorrow. Maybe you go have a rest.”
Normally, I would be happy about this. I’m always down for a rest. But, this pissed me off. I had been on vacation since Christmas – about six weeks. I had been told that my vacation ended on February 5. I got my ass back to Shenzhen after way too long of a stay in Beijing on February 3. The next day, I was informed that I didn’t have to teach until Monday, February 9. There I was, on Monday, February 9, and all of the classes I was scheduled to teach that day were taking standardized testing.
If I had been told in December that I didn’t have to work till February 10, I could have fucking done more traveling.
This is what I fucking hate about my school.
Part of the reason this shit happens is because my school is run by inconsiderate jackasses. Another reason is because I don’t have an office or a desk, like the normal teachers. My home base is my on-campus apartment. Sometimes I’ll enter the teacher’s offices to fill up a water bottle. That’s it. Students ask when my office hours are, and I shrug my shoulders and say, “never.” A third reason for this is my lack of Mandarin. If I spoke Mandarin, other teachers might be obliged to inform me of this kind of shit. If I had an office and spoke Mandarin, I’d probably never be Informed.
This kind of shit is not rare. Many of the expatriate teachers I know in Shenzhen have experienced the same thing. We call it Nowism, a knock on Maoism.
Nowism is defined as the practice of informing individuals, usually foreigners, when shit is happening by saying, “Now.” You may ask, “When is my vacation?” And, the administration – for some ungodly reason – won’t be able to give you a direct answer until your vacation actually begins. “Your vacation begins now,” someone will say. This happened to me the day after Christmas, when I showed up to teach (actually I was just going to continue showing “Jingle All the Way.”) and a teacher told me I didn’t have to work because – get this – my students had to study for standardized tests. My contact teacher, who is named Banyan (for the trees, not the character on Seinfeld – yeah, I asked), is responsible for helping me and informing me of this kind of stuff. By the way, he is my second contact teacher. I had to request a new one. What happened with the first one is a hilarious story that involves me almost dying on a freeway. But, I digress. Banyan told me the day after Christmas that, “You are now on vacation.” Originally, my vacation wasn’t supposed to start until January 9. At least, this is what they told me after I pestered them about telling me for a couple of weeks. What can I say? This is China, and shit happens Now.
The next morning I tried again, Lady Hangover’s ax lodged in my skull and everything. This time I was scheduled to teach three senior classes. I double checked with Banyan Monday afternoon about whether or not the seniors were testing just to make sure. He was right for the first time in 2009. I did have to teach. Every other Tuesday, I have this class of seniors first thing in the morning, and their level of participation is that of a dead hooker who’s being banged by a Baltimore Ravens fan.
Editor’s note: The author does not actually believe that Baltimore Ravens fans have sex with dead hookers. Though, he wouldn’t put stabbing a hooker past some of the Ravens players. Furthermore, he still can’t fully explain the Shenzhen school system, even after six months on the job. He teaches at a middle school. It’s called a middle school. But, the upper level students are called seniors. There are three levels of seniors (Seniors I, II and III). After finishing Senior III, students move on to college, or, as they call it here, university. The author teaches Junior II (14 year olds) and Senior I (16 year olds). What really throws him off is the fact that there is a school 20 minutes from him that is called Bao’ an high school. It’s China. Who the fuck knows?
They didn’t want to be there. I sure as hell didn’t want to be there. I knew they didn’t want to be there. And, if any of them had half a brain, they knew I didn’t want to be there, too.
“Good morning,” I said, taking my place behind the teacher’s podium.
“Good morning,” about five students said. The other 50 plus kids in the class just kind of moaned the sound of those words.
“Did you have a fun Spring Festival?” I said
Nothing, just 60 blank Chinese faces, almost all of them wearing glasses, looking anywhere but at me.
“New Year, did you have a happy new year?”
“No,” a boy on the side of the room said under his breath.
“Why?” I said, pointing at him.
He didn’t look at him. I didn’t know his name. I have 15 classes per week. I have the Junior I classes every week, and the seniors every other week. That’s 20 total classes for approximately 1,200 students. I know the name of one kid. His name is Ming. He’s awesome. So, I do a lot of pointing and calling kids, “you.” There are so many damn kids in each class that this often causes confusion. Kids constantly point to themselves and say, “Wo?” Me? What makes it hilarious is that they point to their nose. Americans would point to their chest.
“Wo?” the boy said, pointing at his nose.
“Yes, you,” I said. “Why did you not have a fun New Year?”
I spoke extra slow so he could understand me.
“Homework,” he said.
He didn’t actually have homework. What he meant was his parents forced him to study his ass off. I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t surprised. Chinese students are so overworked that it’s laughable. I can’t help but wonder if they even know what fun is. I try not to dwell on this. If I did, I’d probably give each of my classes a study hall, which is something that’s unheard of here. You see, my students don’t get graded on their performance in my class. They already have an English class, with a Chinese English teacher. I’m an oral English teacher, or, a conversation teacher. My job is to get the students to practice what they learned in their Real English class. This basically makes me the equivalent of a swimming pool. When parents come to tour the school before sending their students here, their guide brags to them that Xixiang Middle School has an American English teacher. Meanwhile, about five students in each of my classes, if I’m lucky, take me seriously. I don’t blame them either. Even though many of them have been forced to take an English class since grade school, hardly any of them speak well at all. If I was 14 years old, and a Chinese dude came to my school and spoke to me in Mandarin during a class that I didn’t get graded in, I wouldn’t have given a shit what he said. I would’ve done homework, which about three to five students in each class do. I used to get fired up about this and stop them, but now I could care less. I would’ve slept. Depending on where the student sits and how many other students have their head down, I don’t care about this either. It happens a lot. Or, I would’ve talked out and been a class clown. Most likely, I would’ve done the latter, and I love the students who give me shit. I just wish I knew what they were saying.
“Oh,” I said, and bent down to put the flash drive in the class computer, which is inside the teacher’s podium. I flipped a switch, and the projector screen inched its way from the ceiling. Then I turned on the overhead, and opened up a Word document entitled “Simpson’s scripts.”
“OK class,” I said. “Repeat after me: Dad…we’ve been robbed!
“Dad…we’ve been robbed!”
“Wake up, Dad, wake up! There was a burglar and he took my saxophone!”
“Wake up, Dad, wake up! There was a burglar and he took my saxophone!”
“Woo-hoo!”
“Woo-hoo!”
We went through the entire scene, and when we were done, I played the scene, with Chinese subtitles. It’s from an episode in season five, where the Springfield Cat Burglar steals Lisa’s saxophone and Homer leads a vigilante group in order to get it back. It’s one of the best Simpson’s episodes of all time. First of all, it mocks so many movies: Dr. Strangelove, the Pink Panther, and It’s a Mad, Mad World. It also makes fun of Dragnet (the TV show, not the Dan Akroyd-Tom Hanks 1987 classic film adaptation). Favorite lines from the episode: “And as for your grandma, she shouldn’t have mouthed off like that,” and, the one I have been quoting for over a decade, “People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forty percent of all people know that.”
When we were done watching that first initial scene of the episode, I brought the script back up on the screen and went over the dialogue with them again. And then after that I intended to re-watch the scene. It’s really a good listening exercise, and the subtitles help the students who give a shit. As we began to go over the dialogue, I realized that a large portion of the class, mainly the boys who were clumped together in three rows, were just groaning along, making the sounds and not actually speaking. Just like how they said good morning to me.
“OK,” I said. “Now just these three rows.”
Silence.
“These three rows right here – read,” I said, pointing.
None of them would even look at me.
“Come on. You can do it,” I said, talking to them like they were babies. “I know you can. Come on. Come on. You can do it.”
Some of the other kids began to laugh, and I had to quiet them. Then the three rows of boys finally spoke, many of them with arms folded.
At one point, I paused the video and made the students write down a description of what they saw on the screen: the characters’ physical features, furniture in the background, clothing color, etc, etc. I walked around the room and looked over shoulders. Many of the students just sat there, not doing a thing. When I prodded them to write, they said, “No English,” or “I don’t know.” My best students, for the most part, are girls, and one girl wrote, “They have yellow skin and only four fingers.” I was so happy when I saw this that I read it out loud. Another girl wrote, “They all have strange hair,” which is a running gag on the show. We watched most of the episode, and the students didn’t laugh at everything, but, thanks to the subtitles, they got most of the jokes. They loved the scene where the house runs down the street and catches on fire, as well as the scene where the laser hits the old man in the eyes. They even laughed at Skinner and Homer mocking Dragnet. We spent the last 15 minutes of class playing a vocabulary game with some of the words from the script.
I’ve been showing random episodes of the Simpson’s for six months now. A couple of my Junior classes beg for the show as soon as I walk in the room. They’re fucking hooked.
By my third class that morning, I was sick of that episode of the Simpson’s. Instead of going over that, I decided to show pictures of my trip to Beijing and the Great Wall. I started out by asking how many of them had been to their nation’s capitol.
Just one. One girl and she was probably the best student, too. What does that say to you?
“Do any of you want to visit Beijing or see the Great Wall?” I asked.
Silence.
The girl who had been there looked around, an odd smirk on her face.
“To Americans, the Great Wall is the iconic place to visit when you come to China. That’s one the main things your country is known for. But, I understand. In America we have the Grand Canyon, which I haven’t seen, Mount Rushmore, which I haven’t seen, and several things in New York and Washington D.C., all of which I have seen. And, I’d say that many Americans have never seen the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Remember I showed you a picture of that in our first class?”
“Many Chinese work very hard,” the girl who had been the Great Wall said. “Spring Festival, they go home to see family.”
I ate lunch that day with my school’s headmaster in the cafeteria. He’s a cool motherfucker. I have him on video doing 50 one-armed push ups, and he is standing next to me as I lead the entire student body (all 3,100 of them) in chanting, “Here we go Steelers, here we go.” He’s a very busy cool motherfucker, too. Nowism is not his fault. The last time I played basketball with him, he held up the game by 30 minutes. It was in a co-ed faculty basketball league playoff game, and I swear the refs were trying to cheat for the headmaster’s team. My team still one, putting us in the finals. They never told me when the championship was to be played. They probably did it on Christmas.
I went on a McDonald’s binge over my vacation, and I’m trying to diet to make up for it. I had a bowl of rice, and two small portions of vegetables. My headmaster did not like this. I needed “nutrition.” He tried to pawn off tofu and chicken to me. Tofu, regardless of the country, is disgusting. Chinese people love it, and there are even street venders who grill it. The chicken was still on the bone. The chicken is always still on the fucking bone, which makes it next to impossible to eat with chopsticks. I passed. He asked about my vacation to Beijing. I told him everything I did and saw, and then I told him about my last class, where just one girl had been to Beijing, had seen the Great Wall.
“I go to Beijing five times,” he said. “Never go to Great Wall. Always there on business. My wife and daughter went. Maybe someday I will get to go.”
He said it with a mouthful of tofu and rice. A couple pieces of rice flew out of his mouth and just missed me. Chinese people have horrendous table manners by western standards. They put their elbows on the table, talk with their mouthful, slurp their food and chew with their mouth open. It can be annoying at times, quite frankly, but you get used to it. It’s China.