Archives for May 2009
It’s the Same Damn School
My blog hit a rough spot two months ago when I stumbled into a patch of contract nonsense, and I haven’t felt inclined to talk about much since. I don’t think people realize how stressed I’ve been trying to find a new job before my visa/residency expires. Allow me to catch you up to speed: I’ve been pretty stressed. I started with a huge list of prospects that’s quickly degenerated to the point where the only option left is the barely legible note at the bottom of the paper that reads: Worst case scenario: go to training school and ask for old job back. Reluctantly, I did. The Chinese school system wins in the end.
I have such bad luck. And it’s not funny bad luck, either, where everything I touch gets destroyed due to hilarious coincidences. It’s the bad kind of bad luck, where things just don’t work out. Three times, I thought I had discovered a hidden gem of a college willing to hire me, but every time, this new school turned out to be the same college we already found for my brother. The recruiter of the day was just hoping she could sweep in and claim the position (and commission) before my brother officially signed with our original recruiter. This must be the only school in all of Changzhou that wants a teacher!
In a desperate attempt to get my current school to change its mind, I suggested that the full-year teacher and I split the workload (and salary) for the first semester. My supervisor replied with a sob story about how this would require two trips to Nanjing (Nanjing is two hours away) to visit the educational bureau, and it’s just not worth their time. So I said, “What if I can get a training school to renew my visa? Then nobody has to go to Nanjing for me.” Sorry. No. I’ve been so frustrated with the whole school, because it feels like it goes beyond the full-year protocol and is somewhat personal. My recruiter did let slip the school’s confession of me being “difficult to work with,” that they had “no patience for foreign teachers anymore.”
What is that supposed to mean?!
In the few days leading up to my school’s decision to take the contract back, a few things happened. On the first day, a Chinese teacher approached me and told me to stop calling the general manager whenever I needed a new water jug for my apartment (I didn’t know I was calling the general manager; my supervisor gave me his number). On the second day, I pointed out that their initial write-up of the new contract was unfair (they wanted me to work more hours for less money). The day before the swap, my girlfriend came to have lunch with me during our three-hour break (previous Star teachers have told me the school didn’t approve of their female visitors). Who knows what ultimately happened. Who cares. I am convinced Wujin Star Experimental School is run by a bunch of assholes, anyway.
Chinese Drivers Will Eventually Kill Me
There is a one-way street all the taxi drivers love to go down, because it’s the quickest way to get to my girlfriend’s neighborhood. I never realized it was a one-way street (though the narrowness and tens of close calls should have tipped me off) until one taxi driver turned around and started going the right way to avoid the police at the other end. My trust in Chinese taxi drivers has since plummeted.
I’m very aware now of when they purposefully run a red light. In their defense, they do try to be clever about this by signaling a turn, then, oh, whoops, I guess I’m going straight! I’m also not a fan of them flashing their brights at other cars to let them know, “Get the hell out of my way.” If you tried that in America, whoever was in front of you would slam on the breaks and come pound you into the ground.
The surprising part is that I haven’t witnessed a lot of traffic accidents, and the ones I have seen have been mild fender benders (which still require a lot of standing around and yelling at each other while the rest of traffic tries to squeeze by). I always wondered if everyone’s disregard for the rules was somehow counterbalanced by a heightened sense of caution, if that makes any sense at all. I finally looked up the statistics to prove that it doesn’t make sense.
In 2008, there were 265,204 reported accidents in China, resulting in 73,484 deaths. Compare this to the 39,800 deaths in the US, and it seems like China is clearly the dubious winner in reckless driving. But you also have to realize that China has a population of 1.3 billion while the US is 307.2 million, which suggests that maybe we are equally careless. If you divide the number of deaths by the number of people, however, 0.005% of China’s population died due to traffic accidents as opposed to 0.013% in the US. The good news is that accidents in both countries are down 10% and 8% from 2007.
Sources: this, this, and this.
The Money Shot
Being the popular tourist attraction that it is, Xuzhou didn’t really have any unique souvenirs to take home. But I did find a toy jelly lens you can stick on the front of your camera to take close-close-close-close-up pictures of stuff. While most of the pictures I’ve taken have been of dirty toothbrushes, dead mosquitoes, and disgusting frogs (linked for fair warning), I do have two pictures of Chinese coins relevant enough to post on the blog… and act as a great filler until I’m in the mood to sit down and write an article about how much I hate dealing with Chinese schools. Enjoy!
Fountain of Youth
In America, if a stranger sat by you on the bus, struck up a short conversation, then invited you to come to his house the next day for dinner, you would probably tell him to go to hell. In China, this is a common occurrence. To be fair, I can’t say Chinese people are always this hospitable and open towards each other. These invitations are extended to me, because I’m a foreigner (and I accept, because I’m naive). Students grow up being told by their teachers that if they want to improve their English, they need to befriend foreigners and approach them whenever possible, regardless if they look busy.
The man who sat by me on the bus a few nights ago, however, clearly didn’t need to practice English. He already spoke very well and never bothered to play the “my English is so poor, please help me” card. It’s nice to meet people who are genuinely interested in getting to know you, even if that interest still stems from the fact that you stick out like a dinosaur in a chorus line. The next day, the two of us went to the gym, played pool, ate a home-cooked meal from his mother, and went to the park to watch a nightly fountain show. I had no idea that fountain show was even there. Eleven months here, and Changzhou is still full of surprises.
Blogspot Blocked in China, 2009 Edition
I am not amused by the Chinese government. Blogspot has been blocked in China again (where the word “again” implies that this has happened multiple times in the past) and joins Youtube as one of my most visited sites I no longer have access to. Well… you can use a proxy server to bypass the block, but it’s a hassle, and I don’t feel very comfortable sending passwords through a proxy. I guess I should just digest my filtered Chinese news like a good boy and be happy nobody’s pulled the plug on my own blog yet. I’d better ensure this never happens with some positive chanting:
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with censorship or if it’s just a mind-boggling coincidence, but sometimes I’ll do a search that shuts down Google for the next several minutes. At any given time on any given day, as soon as I search for “zhenjiang attractions,” Google goes completely blank. Is there something in Zhenjiang I’m not supposed to know about? Oh, right, I should be minding my own business. I love China!
Xuzhou and the Little Warrior that Could
When you haven’t heard from me for a while, there’s a good chance it means I went on vacation somewhere. Or I’m just really worried about what’s going to happen next semester and can’t focus on anything until this problem gets resolved. The past five days have been a little of both. First, my rant:
Twice now my school has agreed to let me stay only to change its mind later. I’ve since consulted four different recruiters; none of them have been able to find me a job. Can you believe that? And the only hangup is that I don’t want to commit to a full year. But that’s not as ridiculous as the story of my friend in Hefei who’s having his own contract problems. His school dumped a five-year rule on him, forcing him to leave the country, so (as was finally admitted) it can hire a new, inexperienced teacher for a lower salary.
Talking about this stuff makes me pretty angry. Here’s another picture of Xuzhou to help sooth things over:
You know you’re desperate for entertainment when you choose Xuzhou as your weekend getaway. Nobody goes there. But I still recognize that I’m a foreigner in a strange land who wants to see new things wherever possible. If it works out that I can stay next semester, maybe then I’ll finally curl up at home and become a local person. In the meantime, it was nice to see Xuzhou, regardless if it is a lazy town with no other pastimes outside of swimming in the lake and sleeping on the job. I saw a lot of both.
The city does have a terracotta warrior museum. Its scope is nowhere near comparable to the one in Xi’an, but the dynasties aren’t even the same. These Han Dynasty figures are much smaller, too, like 2000-year old Barbie dolls. Plus, they say funny things when you pull the strings in their backs.
What Planet are you From?
The Grade 4 book is taking a break from difficult grammar rules now to talk about… outer space. Yes, folks, this is what constitutes important survival English. The word “planet” is way out of their reach, however, and most of the kids just use the closest-sounding word that still gets a laugh (usually banana or panda). Hey, it’s better than when they always answer my questions in Chinese. I want to bury my face in the palm of my hand every time they do this. Look, I know you know what it is in Chinese! Now tell me the English!
Luckily, outer space only lasted a week and made for a nice segue into geography. For this lesson, I’ve been drawing maps of the US and China on the board so we can talk about the difference between a country and a city. I try to just stick to the mainlands, but every time I draw China without its nearby islands, the kids scream, “Taiwan! Taiwan!” Like, don’t you dare forget that Taiwan is part of China.
What’s really amusing is how the kids take such a huge interest in US presidents. After class, they always run up to me and start spouting off as many presidents as they can think of, pronouncing the names in recognizable Chinese. Today, I noticed that one of the kids was wearing a shirt with the whole Obama family printed on the front. It was such a strange thing for a little Chinese boy to be wearing, and I started laughing in front of the class. I don’t think I had that kind of global awareness when I was his age, though. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who ruled over any other country outside my own. All I knew was that if you wanted to make a joke at the expense of a famous person, Bill Clinton and the nameless Queen of England were safe bets.
The Bus Stops for Wee
Okay, I actually do have a story to tell about Yangzhou. I’ve just been feeling tired and sick lately and haven’t even had the energy to complain about it in written form. But the blog must go on! And you’ll appreciate this story, too, because it’s about pee.
I took a bus to Yangzhou, since the train takes twice as long. I don’t really like taking long-distance buses, though, because the drivers don’t stop for bathroom breaks unless a passenger is about to explode. Guess who the near-exploding passenger was this time? I really didn’t want to bother the driver, but I finally tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he could stop the bus so I could “xiao bian” (which makes for an amusing translation: little convenience). He told me to wait 20 minutes. I already knew I was reaching my limit, but I thought I’d humor him. I sat back down.
As I shook and sweated in my seat, a lady behind me offered to help. “I can tell the driver what you need,” she said. Oh, but the driver already knew, and I already knew I wasn’t going to make it. I confronted him again and said, in Chinese, “I need to use the bathroom now.” He reluctantly pulled over, and I got out and xiao bianed on the side of the road for everyone to see. For like five minutes straight. I climbed back onto the bus and hurried to my seat to hide my embarrassment. Aside from the fact that I did avoid peeing my pants, my only consolation now was that I would never see any of these people again. Never… again…
The next day, I got on the bus to go back to Changzhou, feeling a little more confident that I wouldn’t have to halt this particular trip. But then I made eye contact with a familiar woman. She was the same woman who had offered to help me on the first bus ride. As soon as she saw me, she smiled and said, “Good luck!”
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