Chapter 17
Summer Holiday 2007
As the Summer Holidays approached in 2007, I knew that it was not the right time to go back to Australia. My kids and I needed time to process all the things that had gone on in our emails. We needed space to work out our feelings.
But that left me with a decision to make. 'What to do with my summer holidays?'
Naoko, a Japanese teacher at my school suggested that I visit her in Japan. She said that she would be pleased to show me around. Chiara in the meantime suggested that I go visit her in Italy. I decided that perhaps the best thing to do would be to go back to Hong Hu and spend time with Mingxing, who would be on holidays from university in Chengdu, but he advised me that he had a part time summer job and would not be going home.
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| Jiji Lake in Suzhou |
Eventually I decided to go to Macao and do some gambling. I do like pokie machines ('slots' to you yanks). So off I went. Oh My God were they savage! Nothing like in Australia.
My time in Macao (despite the expense) was interesting. The cultural difference between the people there and the Mainland Chinese is tangible. I could never get over traffic coming to a stop every time I stepped onto a pedestrian crossing. And I met some interesting people including an incognito priest.
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| St. Paul's Macao |
I did make sure to check the tourist maps and went to visit as much as I could, but I do admit that I spent most of my time at the casino.
While I was staying in the hotel in Macao, which I had paid for nine days in advance, Mingxing contacted me saying that his summer job had fallen through. So, when the time came, I took the ferry to Shenzhen and then a plane to Chengdu. I have written somewhere of my plane trips from Shenzhen to Chengdu and Chengdu to Shanghai. Both times I ended up sitting in the plane for 2 hours after boarding. Sheer bedlam!
When Mingxing asked me if I could come to Chengdu, I warned him that if he did not plan something for us to do that I would just sit in a hotel room and watch TV. So he began to research on the internet, and organized trips to LeShan and Emeishan. He could not have done a better job of organizing the trips. They were fantastic, even if the Emeishan trip just about killed me.
You cannot go to Sichuan and not go to Mt. Emei, but it is arduous, even when you take all the easy options. The ticket for Emeishan is good for two days, and on the first day we walked up to about the 900 meter mark before returning to a bus station and going back to the hotel. The second day we took a tour to the summit, booked through a local company, and we still had a hard slog of it. But it is truly worth seeing. It is spectacular.
I only spent a week with Mingxing, but it was a busy week. As for what I did for the rest of the summer after I returned to Suzhou, I have no idea. It could not have been much because I had blown a considerable amount of money in the few weeks I was away.
When School started in September 2007, I was joined in teaching English, by Jhunex, a young man from the Philippines.
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| A View in Macao |
Jhunex
The Agricultural School had two types of students; their own, and those who came for one year from 'special schools'. Those 'special school' students were, generally speaking, the absolute dregs, and they gave both Zhunex and I a lot of trouble. Jhunex hated teaching them as much as I did, but from memory, he had more of them to teach than I did.
They eventually did such a number on him that his first 6 month contract was not extended.
Toward the end of the following semester - my third - I faced the same fate from a different batch of these 'spoiled rotten, arrogant, lazy, good for nothings' - which most of them actually were. There were of course some bright lights and I will get to them soon enough.
Although Jhunex and I were good friends and spent a reasonable amount of time together, he already had Philippino friends teaching in Suzhou and spent most of his time with them.
Even today, in 2010, we still occasionally keep contact or follow each other's progress through our mutual friend Jerry.
Jerry
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| Jerry on Mt. Tai Shandong |
Jerry had been Jhunex's student in Shandong (I think) but Jerry quit college to go to work in Tianjin to earn money. He did this because his family was not well off and he did not consider his college to be of such a particularly high standard as to benefit him. While he was working in Tianjin, he kept in email contact with Jhunex, and when Jhunex came to Suzhou, Jerry came down to meet him. And of course, he met me.
While in Suzhou, he applied for a job at a tourist hotel, and despite not having finished college, he was employed, based solely on his English ability. Jerry and I became good friends, and still are today. The three of us, Jhunex, Jerry and I would often get together for a meal or to go 'walkabout' in Suzhou. Our most memorable trips were to Mudu and Jin Ji Lake.
While Zhunex was in Suzhou, Jerry spent most of his time with him and his Philippino friends, but after he left, Jerry spent more time with me, so that by the time I left in summer of 2008, we were the best of friends. In fact, during that summer, Jerry and I traveled together to Tai'an and Mt. Tai in Shandong.
During my time in Suzhou, I never actually made any 'good buddy' student or local friends. The only 'local' with whom I made friends was a lady who did not speak any English. So that year of knowing Jerry was a special time for me, not just from the perspective of friendship, but because it was a difficult time for him in his life, and I was able to help him cope with the uncertainties of his life, and his overwhelming lack of a sense of self worth.
Jerry was really fortunate to have been given the job at the 'Holiday Inn', and it took him some time to appreciate that his 'character' was made of more sensible stuff than so many of those university graduates who had also managed to score a job in that hotel. The hotel took in 10 employees at the time Jerry was hired, and he was the only one with no college certificate. He was however, the only one who was still employed there after 4 or 5 months.
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| Village in Shandong |
I kept telling him to stick to his job for two years before considering a move. I told him to learn everything he could. I did not need to tell him to be a conscientious and dedicated worker, because that was always apparent by the number of times he would complain about how the staff never took pride in their work.
Eventually, he did move on, traveling to Beijing, where a friend, having promised him so many things, disappointed him. He went back (I think) to the coast, where he received an email from a former manager at the Holiday Inn in Suzhou, requesting that he return to Suzhou and work for that manager in a different location. He did go back, and is still there.
Though he may not have a college degree, I am certain that sooner or later one of the many foreign businessmen with whom he regularly comes in contact will recognize his worth and offer him a company job. Well at least I hope so.
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| Museum on way to LeShan |
Political Correctness and Life's Realities.
There was one other person with whom I invested a lot of time while I was in SuZhou, and he also was neither a student nor a native of SuZhou. He was young, lost, a little on the mentally challenged side, and making money the hard way. I am still in contact with him, but his cause is really a lost one. Given that the boy personally has no ability to help himself; given that there really are no charitable organizations in China; and given that China's social services system is primitive at best, this boy's life is little more than a slowly unfolding irreversible tragedy. There are only three outcomes in the drama. He will die of AIDS; starve to death, or worse, end up in Prison.
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| Suzhou teacher's dinner |
When I listen to activists complaining about their lot; when they berate their country and their people; when they talk about persecution and personal suffering, they really are in my opinion, talking through their asses. When you see what is endured by the 'outcasts' - the discriminated against sections of society in China, then you really know what suffering is.
When you run away from home in China, there is no government agency out there ready to give you cash, and you needn't think that you will find any legitimate work, because you won't have your own individual identity papers needed for a legitimate job. When you fall pregnant to the boy down the street, there is no childcare center in which to place your child while you do special educational training for which the government will pay. When you decide to stand up and declare that you are a 'gay and proud of it', you really need to have Ricky Martin's money and celebrity, to pull it off, because what is most likely to happen is that your family will either throw you out or marry you off to some dimwitted girl. And if you decide to remain in the closet, God forbid that anyone should find out because your ass will be theirs - literally and figuratively. And when your heart bleeds for the suffering of some 'human rights' activist who is on the wrong end of the government stick, your heart will pretty much have to bleed in silence, unless you too want to disappear in an unmarked paddy wagon.
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| Macao at the Beach |
When I hear and see western idiots ripping their societies apart in the name of 'humanity', and see what suffering is endured here in China by 'ordinary' people, it leaves me with a desire to take a piece of 4 x 2 to the heads of those propagandized over indulged western brats. When I hear Aboriginals or American Indians talking about the 'emotional pain' they suffer because of what white people did 200 years ago, I can't help but wonder how much more pain they would have were they now not living in Australia or America, but in the People's Republic of China. Talk about 'vicarious suffering'!
No matter how hard your life gets, there is always someone worse off. Unfortunately, far too many people have been raised to believe that their life is supposed to be lived like an American movie where the down and out make it good; where the bad people get their just deserts; and where everyone lives happily ever after. Unfortunately life is not really like that.
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| Street in SuZhou |
On this very evening on which these words were typed [April 2010], I spent some hours talking with a very nice young man who graduated college and has a job, but whose life is not 'free'. His prospects of earning 'real money' are limited. His chances of buying a house are non existent. His hopes of finding a wife, dashed on the rocks of reality - discovered the hard way, that unless he has money, 'love' is not enough. And worse still, is that while he lives in the city to make a living, he is actually an 'ethnic' country boy who wants nothing more than to go home and live a happy 'minority culture' life. His choices appear to be: 'Happiness in bachelor poverty or Money in an alien environment with a wife whose first love is his money'.
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| On Mt. Tai |
Perhaps you might understand now why it is that when I hear the 'politically correct' flying off their broomsticks over mere 'words', I just want to shove their heads up their own 'you know where' - that place where the sun don't shine.
Life is always tough, no matter who you are. Money doesn't buy happiness - it just buys a better place to cry your tears in. Happiness has different meanings for different people, as does hardship.
Some students once asked me what I usually do at Spring Festival time. When I told them that I usually live in a little 300 person village in the countryside, and that the house I live in has no bathroom, W.C., refrigerator, running water or internet, they were all shocked - including the teacher. Not one of them had ever had to live under such conditions. They think it far too difficult to live that way. It certainly does not have all the creature comforts that I had before I came to China, but when I think about it, it ain't that much different to what I grew up with.
I remember the 'icebox', the wood stove, the outside toilet, and mother washing things by hand. I remember my first 'ball point pen', the introduction of TV, seeing my first computer, and drinking fresh cow's milk and drinking water straight from the creek.
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| Macao looking to Mainland China |
Sometimes we need to take a step back from our lives, and see what it is that they are made of. Sometimes when we think that we couldn't do without something, perhaps we should give it a try and see if our belief system actually holds water. Next time someone uses a 'word' that is simply not acceptable to your politically correct sensibilities, perhaps you might want to stop and ask yourself if your anger is 'real' or learned; a genuine belief or the result of western propaganda.
There is no doubt that many people (in the luxurious west) suffer in many ways, and also no doubt that they need someone to stand up for them, and step in to help them. But such people notwithstanding, the amount of 'self righteous' and 'vicarious' angst evident in the west is overwhelming. Media of all types feed us a daily bowl of anger and indignation; of 'offence' at every witnessed word and act not in accordance with our ideology; and a constant declaration that nothing is really 'our' fault: we are not responsible for what we have done, 'someone else forced' us to behave this way.
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| Opposite Giant Sleeping Buddha |
Ask the Chinese what 'forced' means in their daily life. Forced to work through lunch breaks; forced to cancel holidays; forced to drink 'baijiu'; forced to give gifts and pay bribes; forced to watch others with far less qualifications and abilities receiving promotions based on 'relationships'; forced into menial work because they can't afford a good education; excluded from job opportunities because they don't share the Han Chinese mentality or party membership. Many people in China live with unfulfilled dreams, dashed hopes, and unfair treatment. Do they get upset by mere 'words'? Do they run around killing people because they can't stand the way they are treated? Do they spend their days in tears because their dignity or feelings are hurt?
No they don't, and the reason they don't is that they don't live in luxury. They don't have the time to spare. They prioritize life's events and circumstances. And through it all, they remain proud of their national identity and culture.
It certainly puts a western man's troubles into perspective, and helps him to let go of so much western baggage. Well - it has for me at least.
R.P. BenDedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
Photographic articles: Sichuan and Macao
Hardcover Publishing inquiries welcomed!
R.P. BenDedek is the pseudonym of an Australian who has been teaching in China since 2003. 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
