Happy New Year

One of China's best idea's is to put lights up all over everything and everywhere at the NewYear and Christmas time.  These are photos taken by one of my students of our campus here

Fwd: something silly

My students continue to possibly either amaze or depress me.  I guess it depends on the point of view.  One student had quite the answer to the question (posed in my IR class) "what is the difference between a missile on a submarine and one on land?" Answer: One causes a seaquake, the other an earthquake.  

Below is a recent e-mail from one of my students.
_______________

Is this a likeness to you?  I came up with this while watching the movie called Once.  Do not worry.He is not very handsome.  And you have a pair of bigger eyes.

I am speechless.

Fwd: Thanksgiving Day

Dear Michael.
   I`m Chris Paul.Happy Thanksgiving Day.I`m writing to thank you for that you are the first foreigner who widen my horizon to know other country and help me know a general view of American spirit,such as punctuality,democracy and freedom.You are also a model who remindes me of persistence when I have difficulty learning English.

   Thank you so much.

                                                                                          

                                                                                       

---

09年新晋3D主流网游《天下贰》，网易六年亿资打造

Saving All our Jobs

The English Department was merged with the English Culture and Language Department this summer.  Now, why we had those two seperate departments to begin with is an open question, but merging them together has proved even more rediculous.  The English Department has traditionally been where the school's best students are sent.  The other variations (see Culture, Applied languages, Intl. studies etc) took less talented students.  By merging the departments, we have successfully lowered the average quality of everything (students, Chinese teachers, foreign teachers) in one fell swoop.  So why did we do it?

 

The Dean of the English department was offered an opportunity to become an elite translation department.  That meant that more than half of the teachers would have lost their jobs (myself included, probably).  To save our jobs, and the history of the department, the dean instead merged us into the other department, taking a lower status job.

 

Why would the higher status department be merged into the lower status department?  I have no idea, but here is my two cents: our dean was a woman, while the other dean was a Deng Xiaoping sized man. 

 

Safe to say, the glass ceiling in China is in no danger.  Too bad for us.

Ironic Job Discriptions

Shopping Channel Host in Communist Country:  Host must have a vibrant personality, possibly an ecstatic one, and have a deep passion for equating goods with social standing.  Female applicants should have enormous eyes, male applicants should be slightly feminine.  The ability to ignore humorous paradoxes (or preferably not even realize them) is a must.  Apply now to one of two Chinese shopping TV channels!

 

The things you can discover on mid-morning television.  In the interest of full disclosure, it's possible that one of the channels was just playing an enormously long advertising segment.  But the other one is a confirmed shopping channel!  "Buy in the next ten minutes and we'll pay you!"

 

Yes, I am also aware that China does not operate a communist economy.  Just a communist government.  It's different.

May I take your temperature?

The correct answer to that question is always, "No."  Unless you have no choice, for example you live inside the school and the school gate is guarded by over zealous students with thermometers (see above).  They are there to prevent someone with a fever, the most obvious symptom of swine flu, into the school.  And I appreciate that.  But I will go to all efforts to avoid getting my temperature taken myself-- who knows what happens if you're hot.  

I was also given a thermometer myself today and was told in Chinese to, "Take your temp. daily.  And if it's high, go to the doctor."  What I heard was slightly different: never use this thing, and if you do, guard it like a national secret.  Hmm, lost in translation perhaps.

Creating a Civilized Chongqing

Nothing, perhaps, is farther from reality than the informational video that plays at the train station in Chengdu.  In the video, a smiling family is greeted personally at the train station.  The grinning security officer helps them put their bags through an x-ray machine.  A female attendent gently pats the young child on the shoulder.  A deaf woman receives instructions in sign language and two eldery people are assisted to open, clean seating.  As the train pulls away, another beautiful attendent waves serenly.

 

In reality, the station probably moves somewhere around 75,000 people a day (my best guess).  75,000 grumpy, pushy members of a swarming, heaving society.  People cover every inch of that station, every nook has somebody sleeping in it.  I have never dared to look in the bathroom.  Chinese train stations are not bastions of civilizations, even as the signs on the wall exert us to be.

 

I find that I have become less patient here recently, perhaps even hypocritical in some ways.  As Chinese people swarm around me, surging onto buses to grab the few places to sit, or rush onto trains, I get angry.  I want to smash them all for being so freaking agressive and pushy (literally).  And as I mumble about them all being uncivilized serfs, I use my superior bulk to block them out of the way or push them back. 

 

Is it a good thing?  No.  But that's how I feel sometimes.

Ancient Town

China blocks my blog.  As it does all blogspot blogs.  And facebook, youtube, every fun website ever, to be exact.  So I must post by e-mail.

 

I started my goal of seeing more of the Chinese countryside this past weekend, visiting a forgotten little town in Sichuan with a friend from the translation class I took.  Looking at the picture, you have now seen as much of the town as I did!  We got there after dark, and we found out the next morning that the last bus out was at 9:00am.  But it was a good 12 hour visit.

 

I am glad to be back teaching.  They give me a lot of freedom, with a few notable exceptions.  For my international relations class last week I gave a lecture on the Iraq war, mainly focusing on a war crime.  It's the type of lecture they could never get anywhere else, and I got actually a very positive response.  One student said it was the most interesting and inspiring class she had ever attended.  I feel that I may have set the bar too high!  This week's overview of realism might be a bit of a letdown.

One Oscar, Please

My students' final project was to film a movie, and they (mostly) exceeded all expectations. I had imagined movies shot on cellphones. Instead I got interesting, edited, and occasionally hilarious movie. One ghost movie still scares me! One of the best films is above.

I am back in the US, and it's nice to be back. People always ask me if I like it "over there." I don't know how to normalize China to them. So I just look awkward and mumble yes. Chinese students in America have a phrase, "America is clean, beautiful, and boring. China is dirty, messy, and fun." I would say they are right. I feel so isolated from people in the US... there isn't anyone anywhere! I like going outside and being around 10,000 people. Maybe I'm crazy.

That is not too say America isn't fun. We have much better set entertainment choices -- sports games, music, whatever. But for the average day, China is much more interesting, convenient, and affordable.

Take academia out of my future.

January, 2009

"Dear Michael,

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your submission has been selected for publication in the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs. Your piece was chosen from a highly competitive pool of submissions this fall, and we look forward to publishing it in our 2009 edition, tentatively scheduled to be distributed this upcoming spring."

 

July, 2009

"Dear Michael:

We have a discussion about your article and I am very sorry to inform you that we are unable to publish it at this time. I know this would disappoint you very much...we really appreciate the tremendous time and efforts you have put on revising the article and coordinating with us."

 

6 months in between

2 total writes, 3 major revisions, multiple small edits. 

 

Some of the people in academia I trust most, political science professors at Northwestern, warned me about the ups and downs and challenges of the academic world.  They told me, "Nobody should encourage someone to go into academics."  And they were right.

 

And for my sour grapes: I would rather be speaking in Chinese anyway.  But still.... what a let down.

It's Humid

It's humid here.  And in case you were not convinced, you can take a look at my windows in the morning.

My students are preparing their final exams, the semester wraps up here in another 2 weeks, and time has one again sailed past.  I am glad that I will be back again teaching next year.  

A Friend's Visit

For those of you that I doubt I actually have a job here, I now present photographic evidence of me teaching.  Or at least talking with some of my students before class.  Notice the way they soak up knowledge like sponges!  But the reason I can provide you with such delights is that my friend Dina visited me from Beijing.  She goes to school at the U of M, and we met at China Place, but she is back for the summer.  She is masochistic (she road the train for over 50 hours round trip), her Chinese has a vampire accent (also known as standard Mandarin), and she thinks Hotpot is not spicy enough (Chongqing got to her anyway!), but it was an excellent visit.  The added bonus is that my students now have new gossip to pass amongst themselves, so everyone is happy.

It was somewhat disconcerting to have a hard time understanding her (standard) Mandarin, but we got through that.  By establishing that China is a democratic country (check the constitution), and that Chongqing is more populous than Beijing we agreed to vote to change Chongqing dialect to the international standard!   Easy as pie.

In other news, I now have a camera on my cell phone.  So here are some pictures that I have been collecting over the last few weeks.  They range from the Chongqing equivalent of West Lake (not so good) to piles of umbrellas.  And a retirement home--find that one!

It is finally carved into stone. I will not be moving back to Hangzhou next year, back to my so called Chinese hometown and beautiful West Lake. Which in a way is too bad. But I will be continuing to teach at Sichuan International Studies University, which is how the dominoes, in the end, lined up. It basically became a heavy weight slug fest between my desire to live some where beautiful and my desire to become a translator and have momementum moving forward. In the end, I reasoned that Hangzhou has not moved in about 1000 years, where as my educational window is rapidly shutting. I hope that this is not my only opportunity to ever live in Hangzhou again... It is one of my deepest wishes to go back.

At SISU, I will both teach class and study to be a simultaneous interpreter. And consecutive interpreter. And written translator. And every single possible Chinese-English skill I can get my hands one. Let the man who wants to invent the perfect automatic translating device be warned, I absolutely have it in for him.

Herding cats and being a flight attendant in China have to be somewhat similar. Quotes from my flight last night

• "No Ma'am, you may not bring a slingshot on board... I understand that you bought it."
• " Sir! Please! Don't stand up while we land!"
• "Please give your trash to me, Sir." (as a newspaper was hurled over the seat without looking, hitting the customer behind)
• "No Ma'am, you may not sit where ever you want."

And so on, and so on. I am actually in Nanjing because I have been offered a job teaching at Nanjing University. This is an exciting opportunity. Nanjing is one of the places I would like to live most, and Nanjing University is #5 in China. But I find myself almost hesitant to take the job. I am so comfortable living in Chongqing, even though I don't terribly like the place, and find that familiarity hard to leave. I have an "interview" in two hours, though really I am going to be interviewing them. Questions will include whether or not I live in a reconstruction of the Taj Mahal and whether or not a girlfriend is included in the salary and benefits. To be more honest, hopefully the opportunity is either obviously excellent or terrible. If it's just average, this decision is going to be terrible.