Truthfully, I do love the whole teaching-in-China thing, except for the teaching part.
Today was national Teachers’ Day, which meant I got a lovely card before my junior students in ET (English and Trade) 081 began openly despising me, mimicking my nasally, Western New York-bred accent, pulling out their cell phones and, in the case of one late-arriving student, simply laying his head on his desk and falling asleep. He’s now a Rogervdh footnote — the first student I’ve kicked out of class.
Let the record show, in the interest of settling a few friendly wagers out there, that the meltdown came approximately 170 minutes into my Jianghai College career. Less than three hours. It was shortly after 9:00 a.m. when I grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote in large letters on the blackboard: “BULLSHIT.” I’m not even sure what I was thinking, other than expressing my frustration at getting absolutely nowhere with them.
Oh, but they loved that. Got a full response from the class of 45, loudly chanted, then a few volunteered the Chinese translation: 废话, fèihuà (meaning literally “superfluous words”), or 胡说, húshuo (“talk nonsense” — you can see little lines of B.S. emanating from the second character). If you separate the two characters, it comes out: “Mustache (or beard) said.” Hey, I’m not saying anyone with a mustache or beard is full of it. Evidently, the Chinese are.
Do you want to learn English? (Wrote that on the board.) Why do you want to learn English? (Wrote that on the board.) Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where is God? And why can’t I stop sweating?
Blank stares.
Amid the pregnant pauses, the English eloquence of many students continues to astound me. I broke the class into four groups — by the way, what ever happened to the 25-30 class sizes I was promised? — and assigned each group to come up with at least five sentences or questions on a particular theme. For Group A, it was five questions about America. The second group was told to list at least five things I should know about China or the Chinese people. The third had five places I should visit while in China. The fourth group was asked to describe five favorite foods or dishes.
Among the things I should know about China: “West Lake in Hangzhou is beautiful, and a moving love story about BaiNiangzi and XuXian happened there.” One student, Lily, then gave me a moving and detailed description of the ancient Chinese tale, sort of a Romeo-and-Juliet doomed romance between a man and, well, a snake. Madame White Snake transforms into a woman to fall in love with a mortal man. Long story short: It didn’t work out. It’s difficult even today for a man and a snake, though many women would describe that as a snake-snake relationship.
Lily patiently, and in very good English, answered my questions and discussed the story’s many themes, though they seem to boil down to: Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Moral of today’s classroom story: I had better learn to relax (and teach), or this is going to be a very long year.
P.S. — Forgot to erase “BULLSHIT” before the next teacher arrived. Was that a bad thing?
The China Rog-ect 