Singing in the Rain

I’ve been getting to know the other teachers on campus.  My friend Lucy, a native of South Africa, teaches in an English camp on campus. I joined her today since my own class is over.  The worst of the typhoon hit while we were watching a movie and eating some Cracker Jacks she’d brought with her from the States. 

English teachers like Lucy are creative about incorporating cultural activities into their curriculum. She had planned for the students to pick up a cake from a bakery and hold a surprise birthday party for two of the older teachers. But there was a typhoon going on with gale force winds and rapidly descending rain.  The campus was covered in ankle deep water.   What could we do?  

The solution was obvious. We taught the thirteen Chinese teenagers "Singing in the Rain," and marched them to a bakery on the other side of campus. We collected a cake, packing its ornate box in a garbage bag, and walked another quarter mile to the hostel just outside campus where we were having the party.  Umbrellas turned inside out, and despite my water repellant Eddie Bauer wind breaker, I was completely soaked.

When we arrived Lucy unpacked some balloons and banners, and we asked the students to decorate for the party. When the guests of honor arrived, we shouted “Surprise!” and sang the Happy Birthday song in Chinese and English.  Then, we taught them to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," and encouraged the students to stay off their cell phones.  I had lunch with the other teachers, later on, several of whom I had not met before. 

It was time to go home.  My new friends’ hostel is about a half mile from the one where I’m staying, and they gave me directions. But the gate to the university was locked. I imagine someone in charge had done this to discourage students from exiting during the storm.  The winds had died down a little, but the rain was still heavy, and the water up to my calves.  But this, after all, is summer, and the rain was not very cold.  My hundred per cent woolen socks were kept my feet pretty comfortable, but my body was drenched.  And I was lost.

I returned to the hostel, but I did not remember which rooms they were staying in, and none were downstairs.  The staff spoke no English.  When, in my minimal Chinese, I asked how to get to Shandong University, they directed me to the locked gate.  Somehow, I made it clear that this course of action was not productive.  Overhearing  the conversation,  a guest who spoke minimal English,  inquired what faculty I was on and started directing me to the English building, about a half mile from where I am living.  I made no further attempt to speak in Chinese.

 “I don’t have class!” I shrieked. “There’s a typhoon.”   I explained I lived by the West gate of campus, right near the beach.

At this, my would-be helper brightened and directed me to a pathway.  If I turned right, she said, I could get to the beach and find my way home from there.  Unsure if these directions would work, I walked for blocks. A river of rainwater flowed through the street, and I was becoming chilled. But then, I sighted the ocean.

It was another quarter mile more to the guest house.  As I walked through the West gate, a university guard was waving.  I got home, peeled off my clothes, and took a hot shower.

Ancestry

Weihai, where Shandong University is located, occupies a peninsula in Northern China,  across the Yellow Sea from Korea. 

As you can see from the map, we are close to Russia, and there are many Russian vacationers at this seaside city this time of year. Many shops here cater to this clientele.

Often, people speak to me in Russian, a language I’ve  never studied.  At first I wondered why, and then I realized it’s my appearance. For while I’m  a native speaker of English and hold an  American passport, I’m genetically East European  and look  slightly different from Northern and West Europeans.  My grandparent came to America in the decade between 1900 and 1910. They were from Austria, Latvia,  Romania, and Poland.  

You’re going away?

The summer session is coming to a close, and the students are asking me why I am going back to America.  They want me to stay.

Now, I think I’m a reasonably good English teacher, but I doubt that’s the reason why they’re upset that I’m leaving.  Americans are a tie to the outside world, a reality not mediated by the government of China.

The Right to Know

This is my eighth trip to China, and information control, i.e. censorship, is the tightest I’ve ever seen it, probably because there are rumors of civic unrest, and this is the 25^th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Google searches are prohibited as are Gmail, Youtube,  Facebook, and Wikipedia.  Multiple websites are blocked: the subjects are as diverse as world geography, linguistics, and the history of the Boy Scouts. Even a link my son sent me concerning requirements to be met by advanced level soccer coaches in the US appears to have been blocked. I am told a massive bureaucracy controls what the Chinese public may read. 

 As you may imagine, this affects the academic work one can do over here. It is disconcerting. 

I mentioned the problem to a Communist Party official at a dinner party we both were attending, and while she acknowledged that Google, Youtube, and Facebook were blocked for “security reasons,” she said the others problems were due to technical difficulties.   No doubt some of the problems are, and these are resolved by rebooting and repeating a search.  Sometimes my ETSU mail goes down for awhile, or one of Joe’s emails is mysteriously delayed, and I cannot tell why. I doubt that it’s censorship all of the time, but it probably is pretty often. I believe the Chinese government wants to conceal the extent to which things are censored.

My friends and students take the problem for granted, accepting it as a mild annoyance, like mosquitos and dragon flies.  I cannot do this.  For those of us raised in America, access to information is something like oxygen.  Back home, we never notice its presence because it is always there. 

Call it relationship

The Chinese like to do business with those they know.  In business and academe, there are networks of relationships which offer access to cultural goods like contracts, jobs, and spots at prestigious universities. People often give “presents” to those who might offer advantages, and when the gifts are more than symbolic, it is extremely awkward, for it feels like bribery.