Last impressions

I have been back in the US for about a month now. Thinking back to my time in China, the place, the people and my memories are already fading fast. I think the main reason is that these two worlds are so different so when I step into one country, the other takes on a dreamlike quality.

I think of China as a list of contradictions. Industrial wasteland + lush countryside. Frustrations with a student who has given up on learning English + joy over one who has broken out of her shell. Mostly, it was the feeling of being part of and distinct from something at the same time.

In America, I must answer the annoying question, “How was China?” There is no way to answer it, to list what it is and is not, to describe what I thought then and what I think now. I cop out with the answer, “It was a good experience.”

And it was. But I have a difficult time telling you how.

Let me try with this memory: In my last days in China, I went to a Senior 3 student’s hometown in the countryside. Daniel was a gregarious, handsome 17-year-old who had insisted for weeks that I meet his entire family. So I did. I met mother and father, younger brother, grandmother and grandfather.

Grandpa Lu was the first traditional Chinese doctor in the town. He had his own practice on the first floor of the family's large house. Grandpa Lu intrigued me. He was a self-made man, putting himself through school, eventually becoming a kind of local celebrity. I had so many questions for him, but he only spoke in the dialect of the town, different from any Hunanese dialect I had heard and very different from Mandarin. Daniel translated for me.

We talked about Grandpa Lu's childhood, how the village has changed over the years, how the country has changed. He and his wife had seen the changes together. As little kids growing up together, they were friends first. I wanted to hear about their childhoods.

That's how Grandpa and Grandma Lu ended up singing a song. It was the song they sang every morning before class began, and this was the first time they had sung it in more than fifty years.

To be honest, I don't understand a word of the song. I just know -- and I feel this way even now when I listen to the clip -- the audio somehow captures the essence of my experience -- incomprehensible, nostalgic, strange, beautiful.

Journey

I am experiencing déjà vu. My suitcase lies open and everything that should be in it is sprawled on table, couch and floor. Rolled-up clothes, bottles of moisturizers, books I can’t bear to part with. This was the same scene eleven months ago in Chicago when I was making preparations to go to China. Now I’m onto the next destination.

On July 1 I leave for Taipei to spend the summer in a Buddhist temple. I would like to say that I’m going there to meditate and do some soul searching. Actually, the reason is more practical. My aunt is a nun there and I need a place to stay this summer before I start school in the fall. In return for a room and meals, I will do whatever needs to be done in a Buddhist temple, like the cooking of vegetarian dishes or perhaps the scrubbing of the meditation room floors.

The jobs won’t be glamorous, but I hope along the way a little soul-searching will in fact come my way. All my life I have been too hurried to arrive at the next place; I was never one to live in the moment. In high school I couldn’t wait to leave home and become a bona fide adult. I charged through college in a little over three years and a few months later landed my first job. But here I ran into the problem: I was unhappy. I should have “made it.” I had graduated and found a job. Wasn’t that all there was to it?

In the years since graduation, I have realized no one is meant to have a lifetime figured out at 22. I look back now at that fresh-faced graduate with a mixture of envy and pity. A part of me wants to return to that time, when I felt like I could conquer the world. At the same time, I was foolish and made the mistakes of an amateur -- in work, in friends, in love. I cringe when I think of that young woman, too eager to please and agree and let herself be taken in. I cringe, too, because though much has changed, there is still that part of me that wants to loved by everyone.

So the thought of spending six weeks in a temple in a reclusive town is, to be honest, terrifying. I will have people around me – monks, nuns, other volunteers -- but mostly I will only have myself, my thoughts and my neuroses for company. I will be forced to confront my weaknesses.

I don’t know where this experience will take me. To a more spiritual place? To insanity? Wherever it is, I will be open to trying something new. If China has taught me anything, it is that I will be able to handle it.

Reassurance

In the days leading to my departure, my cell phone buzzed with anxious texts from students asking if they could stop by my apartment and say goodbye. Often they came bearing gifts – a photo frame, a calligraphy set, a giant red good luck knot.

One afternoon last week, three girls from one of my senior one classes came to see me. I had a particularly soft spot for these three. Their class was one of the worst performing in their grade. Most of their classmates had absolutely no interest in learning English, and most could not speak even simple sentences. Yet these three girls were anomalies in their class. They loved English. They talked to me before and after class and came to all of the English club meetings.

Although their English wasn’t the greatest, I knew they tried very hard. And that’s what mattered most to me. Sometimes when teaching their class, I felt like my presence was futile. So many heads on desks. So many yawns. I told myself to focus on the students who cared about learning. As I taught, I looked from one of their eager faces to the next, avoiding the dull, bored expressions of the rest.

That afternoon, sitting on my living room couch, I unwrapped thegirls’ gifts -- a stuffed animal puppy, a journal and an Easter egg-looking ceramic with yellow chicks inside.

They each had also written a note. The first was folded in an intricate origami design and I carefully unfolded it. “Beloved teacher,” it opened. “Very happy to be your student. This is fate, is not it? I learned a lot of knowledge and your teaching us how to pronounce.”

The letter continued, “I envy you beautiful voice, enjoy you both speak English and Chinese … In short, the teacher I so worship you.”

I was so touched by the note that the grammatical mistakes barely registered. It was by the time I read “beautiful voice” that my breath caught. In an instance, I was crying the kind of crying you only do alone in a dark room. But here I was, in mid-afternoon, in front of my students.

“I’m cr-crying because I’m happy,” I said through my sobs.

In truth, my tears were partly out of guilt. I felt like I hadn’t done enough for my kids this year, especially in their class where I spent more time telling students to wake up and pay attention than teaching the lesson. But my tears were mostly out of gratitude for being reassured that even the little I felt I did was enough for them.

I stood up and wiped my face with my palms. I tried to say something lighthearted, like, “Your written English is so good you can make your teacher cry.” But it failed to ease the discomfort in the room.

“Let me take a picture of the three of you!” I said brightly to change the subject and, I hoped, the mood.

The four of us went outside to the road that ran by my apartment building. Against a gray stone wall, I snapped a couple of photos and then we said goodbye.

Leaving me with a good emotion

I have been cantankerous lately. I think it's a combination of a) not knowing 100% what I will do this summer, b) the weather --lots of rain, everyday, c) feeling fat because I can't run outside on the track (see b), and d) feeling like I haven't done enough for my students this year.

My students haven't noticed my bad mood because my usual teacher self is always cheery so when I am not cheery I only appear calm on the outside. But internally I have felt a mess. I have been in a rut, and I was starting to worry I would never get out of it.

Luckily for me two students pulled me out today.

I went to the Senior 1 office tonight to finish giving oral tests to some of my students. When I was finished, a boy and girl student poked their heads in.

"Do you need to take the test?" I asked, slightly annoyed because I had just put away the test materials.

"No," said the girl. "We want to talk."

Still sunk in my grouchiness, my immediate reaction would have been no -- except that I really liked these kids. They were the few of my 800-plus students whose name I actually knew. The girl was Duan Si Si and the boy Li Jia Lun.

Their English was great and I could tell they tried hard at making it better. They always took advantage of the few minutes before and after class to ask me questions. They cared about what I said, hung on my words. They wanted me to like them too. In the past, they even apologized for their classmates when they could tell I thought the class didn't go well.

So I told them to sit down and we talked. First they asked when I would leave, and when I told them in one week, both their faces fell.

Duan Si Si turned to Li Jia Lun and asked him to write down a word in English. She looked at the word, then turned to me and said, "Thank you for representing our class. Even though oral English is one class a week, you do a lot." Li Jia Lun nodded in agreement.

I smiled and put my hand to my heart, what I do when I am touched and at a lost for words. Then I quickly changed the subject so I wouldn't start crying. Maybe she thought I was brushing off her comment, but in fact what Duan Si Si said made me feel like a new person. Her one comment had reminded me of why I came to China.

We talked for about 45 minutes, mostly about school life and their dreams. They both want to be translators. They both want to study abroad. They wanted advice from me. I told them something generic, like to continue studying English everyday, and encouraged them generally. But the simplicity of my statement -- "If you try very hard, you can do it." -- had a greater effect than I thought it would.

Duan Si Si's entire face lit up. "Really? You think so?"

I nodded enthusiastically, and I really meant it too. Here she was, young, confident, smart and good at English. I believed that in 15 years she could make her dream come true.

Halfway through our conversation, the students' head teacher, Mr. Lee, sat down and asked his students to translate for him.

"My students are very lucky to have a foreign teacher," Mr. Lee started by saying. "When I was in high school, I didn't have a foreign teacher."

He went on to say how terrible he was at English as a high school student. Despite his poor grades, he became close to the English teacher. The young woman had taken a liking to Mr. Lee when he devised a way for her to quickly grade tests -- put the tests in a pile and use a nail to poke holes through the correct multiple choice answers.

His English never improved, but he always had his science subjects. Chemistry, biology, physics. He was great. But he became turned off to science because of his head teacher, a bumbling, passionless physics teacher who had no control over the class and inserted "uh" in every sentence.

"My classmates and I made a game of counting how many times he would say 'uh' in one class," Mr. Lee said.

When, as a senior 3, he had to choose between majoring in science or the humanities, Mr. Lee chose humanities. He is now a Chinese teacher.

Mr. Lee vowed never to be a Mr. Uh.

"In a man's life," Duan Si Si translated for Mr. Lee. "If you are a good teacher, it will leave you with a good emotion."

I couldn't agree more.

Ready to leave

Prepare for a rant ...

The tiny annoyances that I found amusing at first are now, every single one of them, unbearable. The smells from below the sidewalk, the pushiness of people, the general disorderliness. I am ready to leave all of it.

Although there is much I will miss about this year (mainly my students), there is plenty I won't miss. For one, I won't miss having cigarette smoke hanging in the air wherever I am. I won't miss the smell of beetlenut. I won't miss the early morning sound of my upstairs neighbor clearing his throat and then heaving a heavy wad of spit somewhere over my head. I won't miss bathrooms in China.

China is a developing country, I remind myself. Hygiene standards are obviously not what they are in the United States. But there are some things people can do to make life cleaner and healthier. (For example, babies can wear diapers and not piss and shit in the street.)

Recently a restaurant manager asked me when I thought China would catch up with America in development. We were talking about how quickly China was changing, with all the new buildings and roads.

"Do you think in thirty years?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said with fake optimism.

The truth of what I was thinking was that China could develop all it wanted, but there were still fundamental problems with human rights and the environment. Tall buildings and new highways do not alone make for a developed country.

Skinamarink-ing toward happiness

The great thing about teaching Junior One students? When I am feeling down, I can teach them a song and make them sing it to me. Which is exactly what I did this afternoon.

Last chance

My students received their last batch of pen pal letters today.

"This is your last chance," I told them. "Think hard about what you want to write."

My students were surprised that we would not continue writing letters next year. I broke the news that I was only teaching at their school for this year. After that, there would be a different foreign teacher.

"No!" they cried. "Too soon!"

One of my students wrote to her pen pal, "Tell you bad news. My oral English teacher Jolie will leave. So we also keep in touch by ourselves. When I heard that, I'm very sad."

I was touched, and it occurred to me that these last few weeks would be my last chance too. I must make the most of the remaining classes with my students.

It's strange. The first few months of coming to the school seemed to drag on interminably, but the last few have rushed by me. I've barely been able to stop and really absorb that this experience will almost be over.

Lately, I've pondered one question: Have I done enough? My self-evaluation depends on the day. On bad days, I am reminded of some students who still can barely read a simple sentence or say a greeting to me. I wonder if I have made any difference.

On most days I know I have had some impact, even if the results of my teaching are not so tangible as a grade. At the same time that there are students who seem to be stagnant in their English learning, I see others bloom. I notice them take the initiative to speak to me in English, whereas last semester they hung back or only used Chinese. And instead of pausing every few words when reading sentences, they push ahead. I notice less fear.

I've learned in my own life that the biggest obstacle to anything is your own self. Lack of confidence can be crippling, and I don't want that to be the reason my students don't succeed. I have my one year to show them it's possible they speak English, and then it's in the hands of the next volunteer.

Against a wall

What's this feeling? Frustration, weakness, loss of hope. Oh yeah, despair. That kind of sums up my morning. It was my first day of teaching after a week away. Usually these first days are a little rough around the edges. Today it was a train wreck.

Last semester my biggest problem was chattiness and trying to get the students to focus. Now it's quiet in the classroom, a little too quiet. It's all too obvious to me now that the kids have stopped trying. I've hit a wall of apathy and now I am banging my head against it.

The senior one (10th grade) students are divided into six classes, the brightest kids in three classes and the rest in the remaining three. I had four classes this morning, three of them with the not-so-bright kids.

To motivate the unmotivated is like conjuring some magic spell. Some teachers have that gift and I have to accept that I just don't. I'm up against too much. There are too many who don't care and who don't care to such a great degree that I can't even get them to repeat words after me. ("I can't see," a student said to me this morning to try to get out of reading.)

The kids are ranked in their classes from the time they are five or six. From then on, you are labeled a "good" student or a "bad" student. The unfortunate thing is that some of my "bad" students are pretty good at English; they just couldn't care less about learning English.

In my third period class, after 40 minutes of urging students to answer questions and read sentences without one hand being raised, I came close to walking out.

"You're angry," one of the students said in Chinese.

I sighed heavily. I was angry, but instead I said, "I'm not angry. I'm just not happy. Every week you are like this. No one raises their hand."

I left the classroom the moment the bell rang and sat in the office brooding and thinking, "There are no bad students, only bad teachers." But the truth is, there are bad students. Maybe if they had more encouragement from parents or teachers early on and even now, this wouldn't be the way things are now.

I'm no super teacher nor a magic conjurer, but I am an optimist. I still have some time to figure out how to break through that wall.

Shanghai: Fifteen minutes of fame on the Bund

When a tall, blonde American stands on Shanghai's Bund, Chinese people have an overwhelming urge to take a picture with him.

Allen and I had just asked a man to take a picture of the two of us on the iconic banks of the Huangpu River. Perhaps others passing by thought I was just another Chinese tourist, and perhaps they thought this was a hard-to-come-by opportunity, to stand side by side with a foreigner and have it memorialized.

The first ones were men who had hired one of the professional photographers along the river. Others saw this and within less than five minutes, fifteen people stopped to ask Allen for a picture. Men and women, young and old. At one point, three people who didn't know each other -- with point-and-shoot cameras and camera phones -- were taking pictures of him at the same time.

This isn't the first time Chinese people have made this request to him. I just found it strange that it should happen in Shanghai and, not only that, the most touristy part of Shanghai. Plenty of other foreigners were walking along the river too. Why they targeted Allen I'm not sure. One theory is he stands out more with his height and light-colored hair. Another theory is that he was with a Chinese girl (me) so perhaps seemed more approachable. Whatever the reason, this was celebrity.

Hangzhou: Heaven on earth

"There is Heaven in the sky and there are Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth." -- famous Chinese saying

Allen and I have returned from a week in Hangzhou and Shanghai. I have been itching to go to Hangzhou for some time now. Often Chinese people ask about my laojia -- literally my 'old home.' When I tell them my mother's side of the family is originally from Zhejiang Province, they immediately ask, "Have you been to Hangzhou? ... No? Then you must go. The West Lake is beautiful."

After two full days of walking and biking in Hangzhou, I must say the West Lake met my very high expectations. Trees lined the wide walkway, with pruned bushes and colorful flowers at every turn. On the lake itself, people rented small rowboats with cushioned seats inside. In the distance was downtown Hangzhou, a faint gray outline. It seemed that only around the lake was the city lively and bursting with color.



On the first day we circled the 15 kilometers around the lake by foot, which took most of the day. To me, what made this place so great wasn't the setting but the people there. Along the lake, couples walked holding hands, young parents pushed noisy strollers and every few steps people took photos of the view. One of the best things about traveling in China is watching Chinese people pose for photos. They must take no less than five shots of the same pose before repeating with another pose. I imagine many of these people did not even make it halfway around the lake.

After lunch, we returned to the lakeside where crowds huddled around singers, erhu players and drummers. The music was traditional Chinese folk, a singing style that sounds high-pitched and nasal-y. I'll call it an acquired taste. I'm not a fan of the music but I loved watching the crowd form during the impromptu concerts. It seemed at any moment a curiosity of some sort could draw a crowd. A couple with two miniature bunnies sat down across from us. Allen went over to pet one of the bunnies and I took a picture. Within seconds, a few people stopped to watch. Before I had a chance to take another photo, the young woman with the bunny was surrounded by people.







Our second day in Hangzhou coincided with May 1, a Saturday and also a national holiday for Labor Day. The lake was transformed. The streets encircling the lake were jammed with buses, cars, motorcycles and bicycles, including the two we rented. The bridges over the lakes and the pavilions perfect for photos ops were packed end-to-end. It looked like people were waiting in a mass line, but for what? They were already at the destination.

Weaving through traffic, we eventually made our way west, away from the dangerously close bumpers. The traffic, on both the roads and sidewalks, thinned. Very soon I spotted rows of short, dark green bushes. Straw hats poked above the bushes as women picked the tea leaves. Hangzhou is famous for its dragon well tea, and by chance we stumbled upon a park where there is an actual Dragon Well where the ancients prayed for rain.



Hangzhou is ranked the "happiest city" in China and I definitely see why. There's the perfect balance of nature's beauty and a big city's conveniences. (Just don't try to get a cab late at night downtown. It's near impossible to get a driver to take you to the West Lake. Trust me.) I wouldn't make a special trip to Hangzhou, but if you are going to Shanghai and have a day or two to spare, it's definitely worth the two-hour train ride.

Despite the pleasantness, I think it was just enough time. Any longer I might be bored from over-relaxation, if that's such a thing. So we headed to Shanghai when we did.

A day in my life

Travel website Matador published my article entitled, "A Day in the Life of an Expat in Lengshuijiang, China." Of course everyday is different with new surprises and challenges, but this article will give you a basic idea of what the typical day is like for me.

Foreign teacher ... and therapist?

I heard a soft rapping and thought it was my upstairs neighbor chopping vegetables. But the knocking continued so I opened the door just as the girl was about to leave.

“Can we have a chat?” she asked, and I let her in.

I didn’t remember her name but I knew her face. She was one of my better tenth grade students. I remembered her because her English was very good and she participated a lot in class. Whenever we ran into each other in the hallways, she greeted me cheerfully, her round face all smiles.

Today she was different. This chat, it turned out, would be an emotional unloading.

She sat on the edge of the chair, back straight, her eyes not leaving mine as she spoke. First she told me that she really wanted to talk to me because she felt like she related more with adults. There was no one in class she really connected with.

“Everyday I sit in my seat and I am -- ” She searched for the word in English. “Silent.”

She brought up her parents, who she said both worked so hard for her to go to school. She had just tried calling them on a school payphone, but all of the phones were broken except for one and now there was a long line to make a call. I asked what her parents do, and she told me they both work in a factory in Shenzhen. She repeated her previous statement, that they worked very hard. For her. She seemed pained as she spoke this sentence.

To fail at school was to fail her family and make their sacrifices all for nothing. The stress of performing well on the national college entrance exam or gao kao – more than two years away – already weighs heavily on her. Now she was doing terribly in science, she said. She spoke her worries about what would become of her if she didn't do well on the gao kao. The pressure was pushing her down, she said.

“I am falling and falling,” she said in Chinese and made a downward motion with her hands. She didn't always feel so helpless. In the past, she was like “Superwoman.”

But lately her health has suffered, she told me. I had noticed last week that she had gotten her hair cut into a short bob. I found out the cut was not to try out a new style. Her hair was falling out. She wanted to cut it to make the hair loss less obvious. She told me every time she washed her hair about 150 to 200 strands fell out. She had other problems too, like headaches and stomachaches. She couldn’t eat the dining hall food. It was too oily and made her throw up.

She was trying not to cry in front of me, constantly bringing her hands over her eyes, but the tears came and I handed her a tissue.

In English, she said, “My heart is tired.”

I spoke little the entire time as she shifted from Chinese to English and back. I didn’t know what to say, except some general encouraging statements, like, “Have confidence in yourself. You are a good student.” At the same time, I felt like this pressure to be the good student was the source of all her physical ailments. In a softer voice, I said, “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Just do your best.”

I stood up finally and told her I had to get ready for class. She thanked me for the chat and I watched the back of her bob as it descended the stairs.

As foreign teachers, what are we equipped with? I can sit and I can listen, but ultimately I can only silently disagree with the educational system in place here and watch as my students struggle not to be swallowed whole.

When does enthusiasm die?

Between seventh and tenth grade, a lot happens to my students. They shoot past me in height. Their voices deepen. They care more about hairstyles and clothes. But the biggest change is not physical. As they transform from kids to young adults, what I notice most is my students' loss of excitement over learning.

When I began teaching, I found my seventh graders to be intolerable. I referred to them as my "little monsters." There was one week I started nearly every class period by breaking up a fight. I still regularly send troublemakers to the office, whether it is for cutting off a strand of a girl classmate's hair or throwing someone's notebook into a puddle. But I've come to understand that what makes the seventh graders monstrous is too much energy. Once I could control that energy, I had a class of (generally) well-behaved students who threw themselves into repeating vocabulary words and reading dialogues like they had been dying all week to do this.

On the other hand, I walk into many of my tenth grade classrooms to bored looks or heads on desks. It's depressing for a teacher to open class with a bright, "Good afternoon!" and only get a wave of grumbles. Contrast that to the seventh graders. I walk in and they are all on their feet by the time I have set down my bag. Their "GOOD MORNING, MS. LEE!" makes my ears vibrate. I love it.

The tenth graders' boredom and reluctance to speak any English continues throughout class. Getting them to participate is like pulling teeth. There are always at least three or four students in each class who dutifully raise their hand to every question I ask. But I cannot seem to get others to volunteer, despite my mantra, "Don't be shy; just try!" It's quite the opposite problem with my seventh graders. All of them want to answer my questions. The class will cry injustice when I accidentally call on a student twice in one class period. ("Teacher," they say to me in Chinese, arm straining to reach the ceiling. "Just give me a chance!"

I don't think this change from wild enthusiasm to an I'd-rather-watch-paint-dry attitude is sudden. Maybe if I taught eighth and ninth grade as well, the difference between seventh and tenth would make more sense to me. But I don't. I only see the before and after. What happens in between is a mystery to me.

I failed the Chinese government’s ‘psychological test’ – Am I crazy?

The PRC administers an online test to its foreign language experts. As an oral English teacher here, I had to take the test. I was evaluated on writing, basic knowledge and my psychology. In the last two categories, I failed miserably. (The result for the writing test has not come in yet so I could have failed that one as well.)

My score on the basic knowledge was 56. For someone who has never failed a test in her life, this result should have been devastating. However, I’m actually not so concerned. Throughout the test, I was thinking, This must be a joke. Here are a couple of the questions:

What color of the majority of Chinese have? [sic]
a) White
b) Black
c) Yellow
d) Pink

American psychologist Bruner thought the essential factor of studying was _________.
a) to form a kind of cloze
b) to form one's own cognition structure
c) to form the link between stimulation and reflection
d) the cognition of circumstance

How these questions could give any indication of my capability as a teacher – or a human being – I have no idea.

However, I was feeling more self-conscious about my score of 61 on the psychological test. According to the evaluation report, my high scoring areas were in “Drink, Extent of Mental Health, Harmonization Capability, Heart Endurance, Sense of Achievement, Emotional Stability, Tendency Towards Violence, Professional Spirit.” I did not have any low scoring areas.

Apart from the “Tendency Towards Violence,” the rest of the high-scoring areas are positive. Yet, how did I still receive such a low score -- especially since the introduction to the test stated there were no wrong or right answers? One should simply answer to the best of their ability based on their life experiences, which is what I did.

So when the test asked me if I would sing at a party, I said I would if asked by friends. Do I think smoking relieves stress? As an ex-smoker, I answered, Yes, sometimes. And when the test asked my strategy for playing chess, I chose, "I normally think about N steps and design a trap for my counterpart." (Maybe that’s why I have a “Tendency Towards Violence"?)

Other questions included: Do you like to laugh? Do you believe that drunken people normally conduct themselves badly? If you went out for dinner in a restaurant, where would you prefer to sit?

I confided in my boyfriend my scores. His first reaction was disbelief. Then I shared with him some of the questions and he laughed, taking full advantage of the situation to poke fun at me for both the scores and my freaking out over the scores.

“Am I really crazy?” I asked him desperately.

“Well,” he said. “A little.”

His answer was of no relief, and I was starting to doubt all my answers on the psychological test questions. But I felt comforted when he reminded me that this was a Chinese psychological test.

I may have Chinese written all over my face, but it’s the good U.S. of A that instilled my morals (maybe lack thereof, to the Chinese), my opinions and my personality. If Americans were all rated on a Chinese standard of normal, healthy behavior, I suppose most of us would seem pretty crazy.

Becoming a better teacher (What I’ve learned so far)

For me, teaching will never be easy. I find new challenges in every class everyday. However, I’m finding this semester to be a lot smoother and therefore a lot more enjoyable. Why the change? Three things: I acquired new skills, put in place procedures and, for the most part, tried to have more fun during class. Here is what I’ve learned:

1. Take advantage of technology

For a long time I put off using a portable amplifier and microphone. I thought the sound from the amplifier was muffled and, more importantly, the thing looked silly. However, the school gave me one for Christmas and since then I’ve been a huge fun. As soft-spoken as I am, I don’t believe all of my students could hear me clearly. Although the amplifier does not have a crystal-clear sound, it is still better than me trying to yell at the top of my lungs. Another advantage: I used to be plagued with sore throats and coughing because I was shouting for 45 minutes straight. Now, no more sore throats and coughing.

I also recommend taking advantage of computers and projectors. I was spending a lot of time during class writing sentences on the blackboard when I could just have the students reading them right away if I had a PowerPoint presentation. This semester I have been wholeheartedly devoted to the PowerPoint. I prepare a lesson on my laptop, bring my laptop to the classroom and just hook it up. This way I can include a lot more visuals. I can also use my laptop to play English songs for my students if they are good (see #2).

2. Have a system of both rewards and punishment

Last semester I established a system of consequences ranging from a verbal warning to being kicked out of the class. However, I had no system for rewarding good students. This semester I started a “star and check” system. A student gets a star for good behavior, such as volunteering to answer a question or to read a dialogue. A check is for bad behavior, such as talking in class or causing some other disruption.

Logistically, I simply had to get a class roster for each class. During class, I have the class monitor, a student leader, draw the stars and checks. With a reward system in addition to a punishment system, students are overall more well-behaved. In my classes, the incentive for good behavior has decreased the bad behavior, so I’m spending a lot less time disciplining and more time on the actual lesson.

If the whole class behaved well and a lot of students participated, I usually play an English song before the end of class. They love anything by Michael Jackson.

3. Have a protocol

For common tasks like passing in papers or answering questions, do the same thing every time and do it effectively. I am working on the passing in paper procedure now. Students in the back pass forward and then I collect from the students in the front row. Sounds simple, but with classes of up to 87 students, this takes some practice. I recommend taking the time to practice.

In answering questions, the rule is obviously to raise your hand. However, I sometimes have trouble getting new people to raise their hand. So, if I want two students to read a dialogue, I choose a student who has volunteered and I let that student choose another student who has not yet read during the class. This encourages students to raise their hand so they can call on fellow students, and it also saves me the trouble of picking students and looking like I am picking on certain students and not others.

4. Charades

I don’t mean playing the game in class. What I mean by ‘Charades’ is that as a teacher you cannot simply explain something with words. You must use your facial expressions, your gestures and sometimes you must turn into a performer. I incorporate a lot of dialogues into my class. Sometimes these dialogues allow for actions. I’ve discovered that the action-oriented dialogues to be the best crowd-pleasers.

5. Spy

Well, maybe get permission first, but I recommend sitting in on another teacher’s class. I sat in on a couple of classes that I was having a lot of problems with, mostly chattiness. Having this different view of the classroom (I sat in the back) allowed me to break down the problem areas. (Oh, those boys sitting together just won’t do. They are just talking the whole time. And those two over there definitely aren’t listening; they’re playing chess.) I must also give a lot of credit to my boyfriend. I have watched a few of his classes and he is quite the teaching master. He's one of the few people who is a natural at it. Watching someone who is good will help make you better.

6. Don’t lose your head

This last tip is the hardest one to follow. Obviously, one will ask, How does one not lose one’s head? What’s changed for me is that I stop taking things personally. Before, when students talked continually, I used to think that they were purposefully disrespecting me. But, as one English teacher pointed out, “You can’t treat your students like adults. They are still children and they will act like children.” So I remind myself of this.

Learning to be a teacher means constant self-evaluation and adaptation, so I’m always changing as I go along. Who knows, I may have a new list of tips a couple months from now.

The reluctant role model

I think I am pretty normal as a person goes. I don’t have any amazing skills, haven’t any out-of-the-ordinary experiences (besides, perhaps, teaching in China) and my personality is, well, normal. Yet my students are very curious about me. To them, my life and everything about me is out-of-the-ordinary. That is, out of their ordinary. As the foreign teacher, I am a vision of another (probably better) life.

Mostly, they want to know about the United States. What is school like there? What do students do in their free time? Sometimes the question is simply: Is America great?

In Chinese, America is mei guo, which literally translates into “beautiful country.” To my students, everyone is rich and beautiful and happy in mei guo. Some students questioned why I would come to China. In their minds, it is silly to live here for a year when I already had the life most of them would only dream about.

Through my embodiment of their dream, I have also become something else: a role model. I have become a role model more for the ideals I embody than for who I am individually, but nonetheless I am one. I am not just an American, but the American. What I say and do becomes an example of what all Americans say and do. That means I must be very, very good in every way.

To be a role model at a high school in small-town China is to be watched carefully. During class, I notice their eyes wandering to the clothes I wear and the bag I carry. (“So fashion!”) When I walk down the cramped aisles, the students’ eyes are not on the blackboard or even on my face, but down at my feet to see what shoes I am wearing. (I have received two e-mails from two different students suggesting I wear more beautiful shoes. Apparently flats are not “so fashion” here.)

Looking good, or at least put-together, is a small problem. A bigger challenge is being good. By good I mean these traits: patient, friendly, warm, engaging, outgoing, fun, funny, generous and very smart, teacher-smart. Plus, I must be all of these things all of the time; in other words, I must be perfect.

I didn’t take on this responsibility of being a role model. It was thrust onto me when I stepped into the job. To be honest, perfection is a pain in the ass. I do the things I may not want to do but know I ought to. When I have talkative students in class who refuse to shut up, instead of throwing a broomstick against the wall as I would love to do, I calmly remind them of the class rules and consequences. When all I really want to do is switch into hermit mode and burrow myself in my apartment, I patiently stand in the hallways for a few minutes to talk to students between classes. In general, I talk more, smile more, laugh more. I am quite fun to be around.

So, I wonder, Can I actually become this better version of myself? Could this be a self-realizing prophecy? If others believe enough in this better version of me, could it become true?

The short answer is no. I can be that better version of me only sometimes and inevitably slip backwards at other times. But, I think, the point is not perfection. It's the wanting to get there that counts. I never thought about what it meant to be a better version of me, and then my students came along.

No classes, but I get a lesson

I overcame the huge temptation this morning to make up an excuse and call in sick. The rain is back. It doesn't let up. It's gray. Without a clock, you can't tell if it is morning or evening. I have four classes Tuesday mornings with my junior students. I really didn't want to teach four classes this morning with my junior students.

But I didn't call in sick. I obeyed my alarm when it went off at 6:45 a.m. I took my morning coffee and hauled ass -- umbrella-less -- to the dining hall where I was met with a mob of students and had to wait 10 minutes for my bowl of noodles. By the time I got my breakfast, most people had finished eating and I had to suck down my noodles and again haul ass to the junior department building on the other side of the school campus.

When I reached the third floor, I tried the office door but it was locked. A teacher saw me and said, "The students have testing this morning, so --"

"So I don't have classes," I finished her sentence.

Of course. The foreign teacher is out of the loop. Again. This certainly isn't the first time I've been notified after the fact.

"Do I have to make up the classes?" I asked. The teacher suggested I ask Mr. Wu on the fourth floor. Up another story, I entered the office and asked, "Do I have to make up classes?"

Mr. Wu was not in the office, but two other teachers were there. I already knew the answer to my question. One teacher said, "No, you don't."

On my way out of the junior department, I ran into Mr. Duan, another English teacher.

"Oh, I'm sorry. We forgot to tell you," he said immediately when he saw me. The Chinese expression he said first was, "bu hao yisi," which literally translates into feeling embarrassed but is the Chinese way of saying, "Sorry."

So I headed back the way I came, through the rain and gray. I could have stayed in bed. I could have avoided getting wet and gross. I went through my usual thoughts of cursing the school officials for never thinking to inform me that I do or don't have class.

But halfway back to my apartment -- I'm quite wet at this point -- I had a wonderful thought: Soy hot chocolate. Yes, that is how I will enjoy the morning. Really, I shouldn't be pissed at all. I have four free hours that I thought I did not have. Yes, it would have been nice to know, say, last night. But I guess this way it's a surprise.

Living in China is the embodiment of the phrase, "Expect the unexpected." Except I never expect the unexpected. I expect plans to be carried out. I expect people to be on time. I expect things said will be true a few days from now. Usually the unexpected is bad news: You missed the train by 10 minutes and now you have to wait four hours. You have to teach classes on Saturday from now on. The bus drivers are on strike. In these moments, I always calm myself with thoughts of, "Well, it could be worse." Thankfully there are still trains running today. Thankfully I still get a weeklong vacation every month. Thankfully I can still grab a taxi.

And, thankfully, this time the unexpected was good. So this morning -- more caffeinated than I need to be -- I will take a hot shower, make my hot chocolate and soak up a good book. I would've been in my warm apartment anyways had I called in sick, but I'm glad I followed through with my plan. This way I get a reminder that nothing -- especially nothing in China -- is for certain.

AUDIO SLIDESHOW: To be a high school student in China is to be 'so lucky'

Shelly was one of the first students I met when I arrived. I was touched by her friendliness and willingness to show me around the school. Since that first meeting, Shelly and I have become close, even though she is not in any of my classes. We often see each other at the dining hall or during the activity period before dinner when I am running on the track. Shelly loves English and is eager to practice with me. Sometimes she comes to my house to ask me a grammar question or just to chat.

Last Sunday, we decided to enjoy the sun and sit outside on a school bench. It was a calm, quiet afternoon with most students out for the few hours that they didn't have to be in class. It was a perfect time for reflection. That afternoon the topic was what it means to be a high school student in China. So here is what Shelly told me, in her own words.

Sing us a song

For three days and three nights, it has been raining, sometimes a light drizzle but mostly a downpour. Everything is gray. I shuffle from my apartment to the classrooms and back. There seems no point to venture beyond campus when everything looks so dismal. I have much to do, but all I end up doing is huddling in a corner of my sofa and reading.The weather has affected many of my students too. I see more heads down on desks. In all of their eyes I notice a blankness.

But this morning I discovered a sign of life. I walked into my first period class to singing -- and the back of seventy-five students' heads. They faced the back of the classroom where one half of the blackboard there was covered in Chinese characters. No one noticed me come in. When they finished the song, they turned around and saw me with a big smile, clapping. I realized that's what the day needed -- live music.

We finished the lesson with a few minutes left during class time, so I asked the students to sing the song once more, this time with the camera rolling.

Action!

I've never seen my girls so nervous before. With the video camera in their faces, they giggled or stood frozen in place or even quivered around the lips. It probably didn't help calm their nerves that a tall, blonde American was behind the camera.

Videographer Ian Bennett visited our school campus yesterday to shoot my tenth graders for what would become an online Chinese lesson available to students around the world. The project is called OneWorld Classrooms, a cross-cultural model of educating students using the arts and the Internet.

"As our world becomes more interdependent and the problems we confront more global, it is critical that our young people gain knowledge, skills and attitudes that prepare them to enjoy the benefits and accept the responsibilities of global citizenship," according to OneWorld's mission statement.



My students were responsible for one lesson containing school-related vocabulary words. Ian filmed them speaking the words and using the words in sentences. My students also performed two skits using the words and demonstrated their calligraphy by writing the words. Despite obstacles -- trains going by, fireworks going off, working around the students' busy schedule and my students' sudden shyness -- I think the final product will be excellent.



And a note on shyness -- I am painfully, embarrassingly shy, but teaching has pushed me forcefully out of my comfort zone. In some students, I see the same hesitance to speak, the same wavering of self-confidence that I felt as a teen and in my early twenties. So I have made it a point to make my students (especially the girls) less shy. I think this experience will make them just a little more confident speaking in front of others and more confident in themselves. In class, I always tell my students, "Don't be shy, just try!" I really want for them to apply this to life as well.

Write back soon!

The semester started out with a round of applause in one class when I told them that I had received their pen pal letters. (The letters came about a month ago, but we were on break for Spring Festival). It seems their pen pals were just as excited to get my students' letters. One American student wrote, "I was happy to get your letter ☺. My day wasn’t starting out so well so it was a good cheering up.”

My students wrote their return letters today. Mostly, I instructed them to write about school life in China. It's a striking contrast to the typical American student's. First, students at my school start the day at 6:20 a.m. for outdoor morning exercise. Then they have a period of self-study before breakfast, and class starts at 8:15 a.m. The last class -- the eighth of the day -- ends at 4:50 p.m. But there's more classroom time after dinner. From 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. the students have more self-study classes, broken up by a 15-minute eye exercise break. Sometimes I am already in bed when I hear their final bell ring. Then it's the same thing all over again the next day and the next day, every day of the week. The students' only break is a few hours Sunday afternoon.

This schedule makes it hard for students to get in trouble. Nearly every minute is accounted for. Unfortunately, there is very little room for extra-curricular activities. I think Americans put much more emphasis on our sports teams and music lessons and art and drama classes. But there's simply no time for such activities for Chinese students. The American students, my students think, are living the good life over there.

One last bang

Feb. 28 marked the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and the last day of Chinese New Year festivities. From my fourth-floor apartment on campus, I could see the city's fireworks by the river. Later that night, our school had its own show on the front steps of the main classroom building. Students were in their classrooms for self-study period, and their outlines could be seen in all of the windows of the classrooms. The pretty lights and loud bangs were probably a final farewell to the good life of sleeping in, playing computer games and watching TV. For them, it's now back to being in the classroom from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

On the road

I am back in China from my 20-day trip to Thailand and Cambodia. I am busy getting ready for the new school semester, beginning this week. For now, some highlights from our trip.

We split our time between Cambodia and Thailand, between big cities and beach towns. I had a deeper impression of Cambodia, probably because we spent more time on the road there and saw much from our bus windows or from the back of a tuk-tuk, the local taxi (basically a motorcycle with a wheeled cart attached in back).

The poverty of Cambodia would have been more striking if I had not lived in China already for almost half a year -- although from what I could see Cambodia is much poorer than China. Children walk around barefoot. Homes are small, tin-roofed, hammocks hanging in front.

From the capital of Phnom Penh to the Angkor Temples near Siem Reap to the beach towns on the southern coast, we watched daily life happen. I am glad we did not fly from one destination to another. As much as I love going to museums or historical sites, sometimes I am just as content watching daily life happen, especially when that life is so different from my own.



At the same time it is poor, Cambodia is also one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. We stayed for a day in Kampot, on the southern coast close to the Vietnam border. We had booked a night at a hotel bungalow about a ten-minute tuk-tuk ride from the main strip, down a bumpy red dirt road. In front of the cluster of wooden bungalows was a river that, according to a hand-drawn map we were given, flowed into a kind of cul-de-sac.

There was plenty of daylight left when we arrived, so we decided to take a trip down the river by kayak. I gave a good effort but ended up letting my boyfriend do most of the paddling while I took in the scenery. Lush green palm trees, deep blue waters and skies, mountains in the distance. It was a bit like floating through a postcard, but this was real and right here in front of me.

We saw maybe one foreigner, but mostly we encountered locals along the route. People kneeled on their wooden boats with fishing nets slung over the edge. Two boys dunking themselves in the cool water looked up at us and smiled as we paddled past. In the river cul-de-sac, we paddled by an old woman, her head wrapped in cloth, who was paddling a canoe by herself. She did not look up at us, only forward at the river.



I couldn't help but feel I was an intruder in this landscape. Bangkok and Angkor Wat and the other main attractions were different; they were swarming with tourists and over-attentive locals selling overpriced things. But here, life looked like it hadn't changed much for many years. I wished I spoke Cambodian so I could strike up a conversation, but I had barely gotten down 'hello.' So I was resigned to be a tourist, floating by and just watching.

Getting bikini-ready

This will be my last post for a while. I will be heading to the jungles and beaches of Thailand and Cambodia for my month-long New Year’s vacation. In the meantime, I am spending this week in Changde with my boyfriend in preparation for the trip: Booking hostels and beach resorts and, more importantly, getting my winterized body ready for a bikini.

Fortunately for me, my boyfriend recently joined a newly renovated gym near his apartment. I went for the first time three nights ago for a spinning class. I have never tried spinning, but I thought to myself, I know how to ride a bike, so how hard could it be?

Spinning, it turns out, is torture. The worst part is that the class is in a small room enclosed in glass, so everyone in the gym walking by or on a treadmill can witness the pain. The bicycles have these heavy metal wheels that can only be stopped by pressing a level under the handlebars. A couple times I tried to stop and nearly toppled off the bike.

“Are you OK?” my boyfriend asked over the thumping bass of the music.

I turned around on my bike seat and looked back at him. “This is hell,” I said.

“It’s only been five minutes.”

Forty minutes to go. I considered faking a stomach cramp and slipping out the door, but I knew I would get hell for it from my boyfriend. So I tried to tap into that burst of energy I experienced the last mile of the Chicago Marathon, when I was so exhausted I could have collapsed to my knees but instead pressed on, saying to myself like a mantra, “Forward, forward, forward.” I could do it then, after 25 miles, so I could do it now on a stationary bike amidst flashing disco lights.

That burst of energy didn’t come. I struggled. I panted. My thighs quivered. I did not even try to hide my exhaustion. I pedaled slower than everyone else. A chubby man in glasses on the bike next to me pointed to the black knob on my bike frame and said, “You can turn it to the left to make it easier.” Even he, that chubby, bespectacled man, was pedaling faster than me.

I tried to focus on the thumping bass, tried to bring a foot down with each beat. I was a little behind the beat, but the music drove me to pump faster than I would have otherwise. So, song by thumping song, I got through the Spinning Class from Hell.

Encouraged that I survived spinning without making (too much of) a fool of myself, I agreed to try an aerobic dance class last night. For a non-dancer, I can honestly say, OK, not too shabby. The directions were pretty straightforward. Side step, side step, hop hop, shimmy shimmy, shake your butt (pictured above). Repeat.

Next on the agenda: Pole-dancing class.

For once, a sunny Sunday

The weather this Sunday was unseasonable warm, a preview of spring. The timing was perfect for the students because Sunday afternoons are the only times they do not have to be in the classroom. People shed their coats and came out of hibernation from indoors. Here was the scene from this afternoon

Learning Chinese with my chopsticks

One of the delights of living in China is eating Chinese food. For someone who cannot handle her hot food, I have learned to tame the chili pepper. And as my concentration has shifted away from trying to control watery eyes and sneezing from the spiciness, I can now eat meals and listen to the words flowing around me.

The scene from last night: At a restaurant near the school is myself, my upstairs neighbors -- who I call big brother and big sister, my Chinese tutor Mr. Tang and his wife Mrs. Mo, and Ms. Huang and another Mr. Tang, a couple that teaches at my school.

We have a room to ourselves and the table is full. Our dinner: Lamb hotpot with rice noodles and spinach, Japanese-style tofu, eggplant and green beans, beef with hot peppers, pig stomach soup, spicy duck and river fish. Not to mention the three kinds of alcohol: Bai jiu (white rice wine), huang jiu (yellow rice wine) and tian jiu (sweet rice wine.) Yes, Chinese people love their rice so much that they eat and drink it.

My greatest Chinese lessons have come from such dinners. As I stuff my face, my ears stay open. What was once a gurgle of consonants in throats now carry meaning. The stock went up up up and then down down down ... My son is in Wuhan, on break from graduate school ... If you want your child to get better grades, you must tell the teacher to move him to the front of the classroom.

My dinner companions shift from putonghua -- standard Mandarin -- to a variety of dialects. I can't understand every word they say, but the idea is there. I know when they are talking about money or education or food. Usually the topic falls within those three categories. I can follow the string of conversation, from "Ms. Zhou's son has a fever," to, "Did you hear about so-and-so's husband dying of cancer," to "Drinking wine everyday is good for your health."

I only wish my Mandarin were good enough to put in my two cents. On the other hand, being the silent observer has its perks: My chopsticks are always moving.

And now Miss Lee covers The Beatles

To be honest, I don't have a singing voice. On top of that, I have horrible stage fright. But before the New Year's break, I found myself in front of about a thousand junior students and teachers singing to a karaoke version of 'Hey Jude."

'Hey Jude' is not one of my favorite Beatles songs. It is, however, within my vocal range and familiar to the students -- The song had been playing for weeks over the campus loudspeakers. I figured if the students didn't understand the words, at least they would recognize the tune.

So in the days before the performance, I practiced my heart out. I recorded my voice, critiqued my pitch and tried my best to imitate Paul McCartney's phrasing. In the end, I don't think all the work was necessary. The students would've been happy if I just clapped and hummed a tune. They're very accepting.

The rest of the show was a mix of traditional Chinese folk dances and some very non-traditional hip-hop/pop/break dancing that made me wonder to myself at what age it was appropriate to wear midriffs and sequin short-shorts. (The junior students are 12-14.)



For a culture as conservative as China's, the show at some points was straight-up pornographic. Girls simulated sex moves by thrusting their hips back and forth. They dropped down to their knees in front of boy dancers and shimmied up to their feet. Sitting next to the headmaster, I wondered what was going through his head. Then I looked at the younger kids watching the show. Was this what they would hope to dance like and look like when they went through puberty?

Compared to the all the butt-shaking going on, my performance was probably the tamest. No skin (I wore a turtleneck) and certainly no movement waist-down. But also no booing, so I'll call that a success.