|
From Magic City Morning Star R.P. BenDedek
Chapter 14
The school supplied me with reasonably good accommodation, and a bike with flat tires. Although I never did try to get the tires inflated on the bike (you'd think you could find a bike pump just anywhere in China yes?), I did have to keep pushing the school to provide the necessary upkeep of the apartment. I had sliding blinds on the living room window that were stuck; neither opening nor closing, and a shower that spurted a fine stream of 'cold' water from the pipes while I was showering, and after the first flush of the toilet, the flush button did not work. It took quite a while for someone to be sent over to 'fix' my toilet, and once fixed, it flushed once and again ceased it's operation. I spent the two years at that school with the back cover removed from the toilet cistern, and manually operating the flush. The curtains were fixed eventually, by being replaced at the end of the first year. As for the shower, it was a year before anyone even looked at it, and once they understood the problem, immediately set about fixing it. Prior to fixing it, I used to keep a little piece of cloth wrapped around the pipes to keep the cold water away from me while having a hot shower. After it was fixed however, I needed a tea towel to stem the flow. One of the first things I was ever told when I arrived in China, was to remember that in China, everything is just a facade. It is always worth remembering if you intend to live here. I will provide you with two examples of what I mean about 'facade'. In Hong Hu, my brother decided to buy himself a 'you beaut' cabinet upon which to put his TV. He had decided to removed the reasonably nice looking school provided cabinet to the bedroom.
In Wuhan, my bathroom was decked out with glass shelving, fastened to the wall. One shelf was above the hand basin and below the mirror, and the second was to the side above the towel rack. One day I was in the shower when I heard a noise to my right. It was the glass shelf slipping out of it's bracket and it was headed for the floor. Since there is no partitioning between the shower, the toilet and the rest of the room, that glass shelf was going to crash and send glass shards in my direction. It all happened in a split second, but as I heard the sound, looked up, and saw the glass headed to the floor, I skitted over to the toilet - about 1 meter away - and took refuge on the sheltered side of it. Glass went everywhere. After the necessary clean up, I removed the other glass shelf (held in place only by gravity as it turned out), and stowed it away. Later in Yancheng, faced with a similar style of shelving, I removed it all on the first day. When I use the word 'facade' then, you understand my meaning. While many things look good in China, there is no real substance to them. They are just there for show. Getting the TV fixed was an interesting experience. About three months after arriving, I lost the ability to locate the TV stations. By this I mean that while the TV worked, I could not find anything at all to watch. I surmised that I had simply hit some inappropriate button, and that 'someone' would be able to fix it for me. Having advised my coordinator of the problem, she sent 'The TV man' to fix it. I can't now remember if he paid a second visit, but I have a feeling that he did. At any rate, 8 months after it stopped functioning normally, my coordinator paid me a visit (she often did - she was a brilliant conversationalist), and brought a friend with her. The friend's husband did not speak English, and so decided he would go watch TV. When the situation with the TV was explained to him, it took him just 3 minutes to fix the damn thing. One has to wonder how a television technician can know all about TV's except how to use them.
As I was studying at Wuhan University every morning, I had to leave home at 7am before the water shop opened. In the afternoons, I had to teach out at the Dong Hu campus and didn't get home till 6pm. an hour after they closed. Consequently, I could never get the water. I learned to drink boiled water. Dong Hu means East Lake, and the Dong Hu campus merely indicated that the campus was on the lake. I have written numerous stories about Dong Hu, including my visit to MoShan park and my visit to the Meiyuan, which was published under the title 'Australian Terrorist at Dong Hu MoShan Meiyuan. Everyday I would take the school 'teachers transport' bus that went out to the Dong Hu campus, but get off at Wuhan University. After my Chinese classes, I would catch a local bus out to the Campus, and in the evenings come back with the other teachers. At the Campus, the school provided me with an ice box - sorry - I mean room in which to rest. It had a desk upon which I could do my Chinese homework or teaching work, and a dusty bed upon which I could 'rest' if I so needed. I often needed!
When my semester at both Wuhan university and at Dong Hu came to an end, I found myself teaching at the main campus, in the building opposite my apartment. Those classrooms, like the ones at Dong Hu, were old, dirty and disgusting. But that is normal! It doesn't matter! Do not Worry! Teaching Students was a challenge however, because I had around 50 students per class, and in an Oral English class, the object is to have each and every student gain experience in normal conversational English. In order to achieve that, I would often break the classes into two. During the first 45 minutes, groups of nominated students would be sent away to discuss some topic that they had been provided with, while the rest of the students would be called one by one to do impromptu speaking. During the second period, those who had been practicing in groups outside, had to hold discussions in front of the class. I found this worked quite well. It gave us all some respite from the drudgery of class. Of course there was just one catch to it all.
Another of my teaching methods was to train students to hear normal conversational English on a tape, and write down what they heard. This sounds rather simple, but believe me, it is not. It is actually amazing to see what students write. It is amazing to see what they think they hear. In this style of class, there is no text provided so that they can 'read' what the conversation is about. There are no questions to answer about the conversation. There are no 'blanks' to fill in the sentences provided. There is just the tape, their ears, their writing pads and their pens. The object of the lesson, is to teach students to both hear, and to hear how words are run together. Quite often students can repeat the sound of words, without knowing what it is that the sound represents. For instance: In 2004 during a Teacher's Summer camp in Hong Hu, I had just begun to play a certain sentence when the bell rang for break time. As everyone headed out the door, a teacher came up and asked me what the long word was in that last short sentence. I asked him what it sounded like and he replied: 'cowsarin'. I asked him what the words preceding it and following it were. He correctly informed me that they were: 'The' and 'the field'. So the sentence was 'The - cowsarin - the field'. I kept getting him to say it slower and slower until the penny finally dropped.
As previously mentioned, the best way to get results from students, is to give them exams, and these 'listening classes' (Tingli Classes) were not exempt from testing. I tested them regularly, and always without advance notice. There was this one girl however, who was constantly absent from class, and 3 times she claimed that I lost her test paper. The next time I tested them, the first thing I did was call her name. I called it three times, and then asked the students if she was present. No! She wasn't present. Sure enough, the following week she claimed that I had lost her paper, and the whole class burst out laughing. Never trust anything a student says! That's my motto! At another time, I had a girl in my class who would only speak English in a test, and during one test, I asked her why that was so. She informed me that Chinese people should not speak English. Even the best students will sometimes conceal this attitude, and one of the best I ever encountered in Hong Hu told me that once he goes to University, he will never again speak another word of English. Many are the students who simply will not speak English, even if it is obvious that they do understand what is being said in English. I remember one time, after semester exams, a student came to see me with a teacher in toe, to complain about her low mark. The teacher informed me that this girl was the top grammar student in the school, and that I should give her another chance. I showed the teacher my records which showed that I had given her three opportunities to do her final test. It also showed the names of the people who were in each different group, as well as the comments beside her name on each occasion. Each time the comment was the same: 'Did not speak!' I informed the teacher that the 62.5% I gave her (pass rate is 60%) was a courtesy, and totally undeserved. Students know full well that the teacher's job depends on all the students getting good marks and know that most teachers will not fail them no matter how poorly they do in exams. State exams of course are different. You can't know who will mark your paper.
At the end of that first year in Wuhan, I was supposed to have returned to Australia, but I was completely unable to contact my travel agent and get the travel date on my ticket changed, so I didn't go home. Not going home meant that I did not 'come back', which meant that the school was not required to pay for that portion of airfares. They would only pay the 'half' return airfare for my flight home at the end of the following year. This however, they never did. Sometime around the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006, the university got a new 'director' or whatever, and it was not long before complaints began to pile up about the way the school was run. Teachers were complaining, and some took early retirement; students were being hit with illegal 'extra fees', and finally, this poor schmuck got diddled of two months salary, plus airfare. When I asked my coordinator when my last class for the year was, and when I would be free to go home, she advised me that I must remain until the very last day of my contract; the day before the start of the new semester. This meant that if I left before then, I would not get paid for the last month, and the month that accidentally got missed earlier in the school year. If I stayed, then I had no time to go home before starting my new job, so the school didn't have to pay airfares since I did not actually have a paid ticket in my hand.
During that second year in Wuhan, 2006, my work load was changed and I had to teach in two different campuses, and then eventually in three - although two of them were side by side. I remember when setting off for my first class at the new campus - can't remember it's name now, that I took with me a computer disk filled with all manner of material that I was to use in class during the coming semester. My new coordinator (the previous one was replaced because she couldn't 'control' me - her words!) advised me that I would be teaching in a multimedia room. The multimedia room turned out to be another dirty room with a VCR and TV monitor. I was left standing with a disk in my hand and no teaching materials. Normally I go to class with all the necessary handouts. In a multimedia room, such would not be necessary. So it was back to the chalk board I went. Despite all the negativity apparent in this chapter, the fact is that I thoroughly enjoyed the students at this university, and it was there that I met such people as Pan Wei, and Mou Jun, and Jarod.
Of all the students at the Radio and TV university, he was naturally the most at ease with me, right from the beginning of semester. Together with his classmates, I taught him for 3 semesters. It was he who was responsible for so many students getting really exceptional final examination results in their last semester with me. Because he understood me so well, and knew all the tricks that I use to make students talk, when he found himself in a group of 6 boring students doing their final group discussion test, he knew that he had better take a page out of my teaching methodology. And he did! I was standing behind the group of seated students, directly opposite Yan Yuhua. We could each see the exasperation of the other, and then finally, he looked up at me, raised his eyebrows and then spoke. Now I don't remember exactly what he said, but he did say something to upset the group. Within one minute the students were literally jumping out of their chairs berating him - in English. He kept firing back at them, stirring them up even more. While this was going on, other students in the room were jumping up and down in their chairs in anger. When one student began calling out her comments, I told her that she was not entitled to make comments unless she joined the group. She immediately grabbed a chair and pushed her way in. Before I knew it, the group of 6 had become a group of 15.
This raging debate lasted about 15 minutes and when I finally halted it, I was beaming with pride. The scores I gave that day were the highest I have ever given any students. That argument was fast and furious. The students completely forgot their inhibitions, fears, and 'poor English'. It was great! When the new school year began in September of 2006 - my last semester, the female intake of students was greater than the male intake, and as a result, one of the boys dormitories was given over to the girls. This meant that the boys had to be accommodated wherever accommodation could be found. So it was that the three vacant apartments on my floor were converted into dormitories for a total of 36 male students. After frequently congregating at my kitchen window every time they saw me cooking, we came to an arrangement whereby if I left my front door open, they were free to drop in. [This is a Chinese custom] The first day I actually decided to leave my door open, I was sitting in the living room, working at my computer. A student appeared in my apartment and asked if he could watch my TV. I told him that he was welcome, and turned back to my work. I don't know how long I was working, but when I finished, I went into the bedroom where the TV was, to talk to 'the boy', and discovered a total of 15 boys lying on my bed watching TV. I am sure that no one in China (nor anywhere else for that matter) would believe that 15 boys could enter an apartment and watch TV so silently so as not to even let the occupant become aware of their presence. They were great guys, and I thoroughly enjoyed that semester socialising with them.
KSX was one of those boys who loved to learn 'yellow' English language. Yellow, meaning 'blue', dirty, vulgar, or just plain, swearing. I remember once we were walking through the grounds of the school, returning to my apartment from somewhere, and in the process were having a disagreement. He said something that I will never forget. In the middle of the argument he turned to me and said: 'I want to F**k you!' I screamed: 'What? What did you say?' When he repeated the statement, I asked what he meant by saying that and he said: 'You know! When someone disagrees with someone else, the first person says 'I want to F**k you!' 'No they don't!' I informed him. 'They say: 'F**k you!' 'Yes!' he replied: 'It means the same thing!' 'No it does not!' I shouted. 'And stop saying that!' 'Why?' he asked. 'No one here can understand what we are saying!' In a university full of students studying English, he thought no one would understand what we were saying. That is Chinese!
At the end of the year, they informed his father that because of the Government crackdown on 'illegal practices', they could no longer take him - and then promptly kept the money that had been paid. Such is life in China! [2010 example] That university was an eye opener for me, in regards to all the underhanded things that go on in China. Life for most Chinese people is not easy, and for those students who are financially or scholastically disadvantaged, a university education, whilst offering the possibility of a bright and better future, quite often amounts to nothing more than filling in time while waiting to go to work. As a result, even the best can become too discouraged to put their hearts into their study, and no where was this ever made so evident to me than in my next assignment, in Suzhou. R.P. BenDedek Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com Hardcover Publishing inquiries welcomed! R.P. BenDedek is the pseudonym of an Australian who has been teaching in China since 2003. He currently lives in Baotou in Inner Mongolia. In addition to contributing to Magic City Morning Star News as a columnist, he also is an assisting Editor for the Newspaper. Additionally, BenDedek is the author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' at www.kingscalendar.com © Copyright 2002-2008 by Magic City Morning Star |
