Chapter 4. The Foreign Chinese Nationalist.
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| My classroom |
Although I can't remember at this time exactly when the situation in the School changed, nor of the precise reason (from the School's perspective) that it did change, I can tell you that the situation changed on the Monday following a screaming fit I threw in a teacher's office.
We had been trying to get the school to agree to give us our own permanent classrooms so that instead of Oral English Class being held in each and every classroom in the school, the students would come to the Oral English Classroom.
Although there were to be numerous benefits to this type of situation, the greatest benefit would be the psychological one. When the foreigner enters the students home room, he is entering foreign territory. He is on 'their turf'. Under the then current circumstances, it was imperative that this situation be changed, and that change eventually proved to be beneficial.
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| No 1 Senior Middle School |
One day I was sitting down in a teacher's office trying to explain to him the necessity of not only having a separate class in which to hold Oral English Class, but the necessity to allow only those students who wanted to learn English to attend class. I told him that he had to realise that most students were not at all interested in learning English.
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| What a time that was |
Remembering that this was only my first year in China, and that I had not yet come to understand or appreciate Chinese customs, the ensuing conversation frustrated the hell out of me, and I found myself getting angrier and angrier by the minute. Every time I made a statement, the teacher would offer some excuse and try to make me understand that any failure in the teaching process was my fault not the students fault. This of course was complete rubbish.
To illustrate my meaning, let me tell you of one teacher I know who teaches two classes, and is considered by his headmaster to be a bad teacher. One of his classes is full of bright, eager, studious, courteous, and well disciplined students. They all achieve high marks in their exams. His other class however was full of lazy, disrespectful students, who not only ignored him completely, but constantly refused to do their homework. Their exam results of course were very poor. Because their results were poor, this teacher was branded a 'bad teacher'. The question begs asking: 'How can two classes taught by the same bad teacher achieve such extreme examination results. The answer lies of course in the students.
The thing to understand about the system here is that Students do in fact have some control over the teachers. Additionally, unlike in the west, where students at fee paying schools are expected to perform well and behave in a manner that reflects the fine traditions of that establishment, in China, the fact that someone is paying fees to a school, means that they have the right to dictate to the school how it operates. In short, receiving fees puts the school and it's teachers at a disadvantage.
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| To stop mud tracks - didn't work - they jumped over the clean cloth |
So here was this teacher communicating with me from a Chinese cultural perspective, and there was I trying to be all logical. With each excuse he offered me, I countered with a rebuttal, until finally after almost an hour, he turned to me and said: 'But you must realise that most of the students are not really insterested in learning English!'
Given that that had been my original justification for the necessity to have limited attendance in a separate classroom, and that that had been rebutted, I simply exploded! I hereby publically confess that I used every 4 and more lettered foul and abusive word in my vocabulary. Teachers gathered by the door, and as I walked out I saw many more hanging over the internal stairwell railings trying to figure out what was going on.
I stormed home and immediately set about packing my things. I was an emotional wreck, and was shaking like a leaf. Add to this that I was a new comer to a Communist country, and you can imagine that I am not exaggerating when I say that I half expected to be arrested and thrown in prison. The next few days were torture as I waited and waited for someone to summon me to either arrest me or at least explain my behaviour. Instead, on the following Monday we were informed that we had been assigned our own classrooms and that we could choose which students would attend and which would not.
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| My students |
It took me a full month to prepare the classroom, and I am sure I have written about that somewhere. It took a month to scrub the floors clean and make it a fit place in which to hold lessons. The first day on which I started the cleaning process, I firstly swept away all the major junk from the floor. Then considering how much real dirt, dust and grime there was on it, I figured it would be easier to flood the floor with water and just push it all out onto the balcony and let it all drain away.
Being new to China meant that I did not fully appreciate the less than perfect finishing touches that are put on newly constructed buildings, and mid way through pushing all this water out the door, a dozen teachers led by the principal came running into the classroom and began assisting me to get rid of all the muddy water. It seems that a sizeable amount of water was steadily leaking down through cracks in the floor, into the computer room below. No further comment!
At the time that the changeover from student home rooms to the Oral English classroom took place, I had approximately 1500 students. Within a month, that number had been reduced to about 350 students. In some cases, 75 students would pack the room on their first day there, and within 5 minutes I would have thrown 70 of them out. You may think that I was really harsh, but it really had more to do with Chinese 'face saving'. To refuse to go to class would be a dishonour. To be thrown out was OK. There was no disgrace in that, after all, I was just a foreign dog! What could one expect!
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| Student cafetaria |
I remember in 2005 in Wuhan, telling a particularly obnoxious class that if they really did not want to be in class, then they could just go. I told them that they needn't come back; that I would always mark them as present; that they would get their 60% pass mark at end of semester, and that none of the rest of us would tell the school. No one budged. Ten minutes later I pointed at their ringleader and said: 'Get out! Just get the hell out of my classroom!' With that 25 students stood up and left. They never came back; I never marked them as absent; they all got a passing grade from me, and none of the rest of us told anyone anything.
But from that day onwards, just like in Hong Hu, things changed, students progressed, and I really enjoyed my job.
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| Some of My Students in the Clean Classroom |
Now I know that I don't write in a politically correct polite and flowery way, but to those fools who in their vain and exotic imaginings think that the Chinese are inherently without fault, polite and friendly, all I can say is that they are either exceptionally lucky (if they have actually lived in China), or have never experienced 'real life in China'. The Chinese are people! They are human like the rest of us, and are quite capable of experiencing and showing every emotion in the spectrum, just like foreigners, and in the classrooms of Hubei, I have encountered some real turds!
I had one student once tell me that nobody liked me because I was old, fat and ugly, and that I didn't teach them in Chinese. Inherently interesting concept that! Fancy teaching Oral English in English! I challenged that boy who was now speaking for the first time ever in class, and without his realising it, I managed to engage him in conversation for a full 5 minutes. He eventually became a very active student in class.
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| Foreign magazines to read |
I've lived in China long enough to realise that most students suffer from a lack of self esteem when it comes to speaking English. Many have never had an English Grammar lesson in which their teacher actually spoke in English. Many simply could not get their heads around English grammar and writing. It's not really their fault, but the fact must be faced that the Central Government requires them to study English, and they have a duty to do their best. After all, it is meant to provide them with a brighter economic future than is possible stuck in a labouring job in rural China. Of course I am only this understanding when it comes to the high school students. If someone has chosen an English major at college, I don't accept any excuse for their unwillingness to talk.
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| Local Family meal |
Speaking English in the classroom additionally carries with it, some cultural baggage, not the least of which is the issue of losing face. In Hong Hu however, despite some teachers telling me that I can't be right, and having some ignorant 'never having lived in China' foreigners accusing me of racism or of downright lying, I had a number of students in Hong Hu tell me that if they speak English in the playground, many students threatened to beat them up. English is only to be spoken inside the Classroom. Good Chinese people don't speak English.
But even in the classroom it was not always allowed. For three weeks in a row I tried to get one girl in one particular class to talk. All she could say (read shout!) was 'No!' One day I encountered her speaking a very beautiful and correct English with a student, outside of the classroom. When I confronted her she informed me that as none of her friends can speak English, they have told her that they will cut her off if she speaks English in Class.
I had one 'English Major' at university who never spoke. She would not speak in any group. That she understood everything I said was obvious by virtue of the fact that others often asked her to translate my words. The only time she would talk was in an examination. During one group discussion test, I asked her why she refused to speak English except in Exams. She told me (and I have heard this many times before) that 'Chinese people should not speak English!' Like others I have met, she did her duty and studied hard to be successful, but simply refused to talk in English.
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| Lunchtime takeaway in the street |
For some students, their lack of skill combined with their sense of insecurity (if not their downright dislike of foreigners) is the impetus that leads them into various types of rebellion.
One of the things that used to really get under my skin, was listening to such people blurt out: 'China has 5000 years of glorious history!' Such bleatings were usually articulated outside of any particular context, and whether elaborated upon or not, were meant to indicate that foreigners are nothing and that the Chinese are everything. As my love for China and it's people has grown, I have learned to deal with these idiots.
Wow! I can just imagine your reaction to that line. Let me explain. The sorts of students who usually come out with this line, are usually lazy, disruptive, non participating members of the class, who do no homework, and have no ability to use the language that they have been studying for so long. And this does include university students.
Having been here so long, and having experienced the very worst that one could expect in their job as an Oral English Teacher, I now find myself totally equipped to head off these types of statements before they ever arise, but there is nothing more culturally shocking for the students, than to be confronted by my reaction when I am angry. It goes something like this!
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| Students on Parade |
5000 years of glorious Chinese history eh? Well where is that history now? It's gone! In your 5000 years of glorious history, did girls go to school? No! So what are you girls doing here if you are so proud of your 5000 years of glorious history! And in your 5000 years of glorious history, was it the cultural norm for students to be lazy, do no homework, disrespect each other and disrespect their teachers? No! In those 5000 years of glorious Chinese history, students had respect for each other, for the teachers, for the schools, and for the property in those schools. Where is your respect? Traditional Chinese Students worked hard to be successful. What do you do? You talk on telephones or text message in class, you listen to music on your ipods, you refuse to listen to your teachers, including your national Chinese teachers and you constantly chatter away in Chinese instead of paying attention and doing what you are supposed to be doing in class. Is this what happened in the classroom throughout 5000 years of Glorious Chinese history?
You claim to be proud of your 5000 years of Glorious Chinese History. But where is that pride? Do you look like a Chinese? Do you dress like a traditional Chinese? Do you practice the culture and customs of the Chinese? No you don't! Would your great grandparents look at you and think that you were Chinese? No they wouldn't! They'd think you were bloody foreigners. Look at yourselves. What do you look like? You look and act like a bunch of capitalist westerners. So don't tell me you are proud of your 5000 years of glorious Chinese history.
Do you obey your Government and apply yourselves to the study of English? No! Do you obey the rules of this school? No! Do you do your homework? No! Do you honour your poor and struggling parents by working hard in the classroom? No! You waste your parents money and bring Shame to them, to yourselves, to your school, and to your country. You spend your free time at the internet cafes looking at 'yellow movies' (porn), or chatting away on QQ (like MSN messenger), smoking cigarettes, drinking and going to the Jinu (prostitutes!). So don't tell me that you are proud of 5000 years of Chinese history. If that were true you would all be very successful, well behaved and hard working students!
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| My apartment in Hong Hu |
The troublesome students become very silent, and the hardworking students usually sit with their heads down, nodding in agreement and giggling! It is said that every dark cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining that usually comes out of my tirade (when it comes out as a tirade), is that students understand that I have more respect for Chinese cultoms and traditions than they often do.
Many Chinese people over the last few years have told me that I am more Chinese than they, and I think had I lived here before the 19th century, I probably would have been running around looking very much the Chinese peasant. I remember one student last year telling me that sometimes he leaves my classes feeling very depressed. That concerned me so I asked him why. He replied: 'I always feel ashamed that I know less about China than you do. And that is not right!' A backhanded compliment if ever I heard one!
So how did I get to be a flag waving card carrying Chinese Nationalist? That's easy. Through what I learned from the good students of Hong Yizhong and the wonderful people of Hong Hu.
The Title "Finding Myself in China" is a play on words, because from February of 2003 when I came to China with the purpose of staying just one year, until August 2007 when I commenced to write the first draft of this book, I have literally 'found myself'. These past 7 years have returned to me my joy of living and gone now are my previous feelings that my life really had no purpose. Having found myself in China, I found myself!
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| Rice field behind my apartment |
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
