A reflection OR The last time I talk about CSETC

I was planning on writing a retrospective on my experience here in China, and until yesterday, I was planning on doing it closer to my departure from the middle kingdom. However, the other day Melissa Hartz published her excellent post on the same subject (You can read it here: http://www.migrationology.net/1/post/2011/11/like-a-bad-meal.html), and it has prompted me to take a shot at writing mine as well, or at least a portion of it.

Time and time again I have asked myself the same question that Melissa did: “If I could go back in time with all of my experiences, would I do this again?”, and much like her, I would honestly have to reply no*. I've had far more miserable experiences here that I've ever had anywhere else in my life, and I would have to say that they heavily outweigh the positive experiences that this strange journey has brought to me. But there's also that asterisk, and I've included that because what I'm really saying no to is the experience of being here through the program that I'm with. If I could do it with a better (Ok, probably much better) program or no program at all, and if I could live in a city, I think that I would be perfectly happy here, and that I would be thinking about sticking around for longer than the year that I had originally signed up for.

Because the thing is, I like teaching here. On a bad day, I'm there to entertain kids, to get them to go, “Hey, look at the white guy speakin' his white guy talk. He's silly.”, and those days can get to be discouraging really quickly. However, there are days when students actually get engaged and show real creativity and interest, and those are the really fun days, and they're the days where I feel like a real teacher, and not just a clown. Those days feel really good.

I also, with the exception of Beijing, like the cities here. Both Shanghai and Guangzhou seemed like very liveable cities when I was a visitor there, and a lot of that had to do with having things to do. In a city, there is night life, there are places to go and people to meet, and here in China, a city means you can meet people that speak your language. Both of those things are hugely important to me, and they are both things that I didn't have here until we met the other ex-pats in Fuzhou a month ago. Before we met the ex-pats, the four of us here would sometimes hang out in my room on weekends, and sometimes we'd go a weekend without really seeing each other, and we'd just spend it in our rooms. It was a claustrophobic and lonely way of life, and it sometimes still is. It's also what makes life here so difficult. These last three months have just felt like a long holding pattern in my life, like I'm just here chewing my tongue off while I wait to get in motion again.

I know that I've talked a lot about CSETC in the past five months, and I know that very little of it has been positive, but that's because they're almost entirely to blame for my situation right now, and they're the ones to blame for the awful times I've had in this country. I said almost entirely for the first part of that situation because I was the one that chose this program. I can remember sitting in the orientation meeting at CSB and saying “I picked this program because I've heard of sketchy programs that will say that you're going to a city in China, and then send you to some other place entirely when you get there. Because this is through CSB/SJU, I think this is a program I can trust.” Welp, guess I fucked that one up. I'll be going to fix that when I get back home.

However, CSETC is the organization responsible for all of the terrible experiences that I've had here. They're the ones that decided that the hell camp in Quzhou was a great idea, and a great place to send people who had been in China for five days. They're the ones that couldn't coordinate with Guyuan and left all of us to deal with the problems. They're the ones that thought that a school in the middle of nowhere was a great place to send four 22-year old teachers. They're also the ones that didn't listen when I said sending us here was a good idea. They're also the ones that deceived us into coming here with them in the first place, and the ones that continue to lie to prospective teachers to get them to come here. If it's something terrible that has happened to me here, I can trace it directly to them. They have no business being in the business they are in.

I'd like to provide some examples. Up until my arrival in Beijing on July 4^th, I had no idea where I was going in China, as CSETC refused to tell me, deciding instead to push things back “until my arrival”. Upon my arrival, things didn't get much better. We got a list of places we were going (except for the incredibly vague second camp 'Inner Mongolia'), and we still did not know where we would be teaching fro the school year. When we asked about that, all we got was “soon”. This should have been enough for me not to want to go any further, but I'm apparently real dumb. Then there were the summer camps. They could have prepared us for the summer camps, but they chose instead to spend 6 hours training us on how to run activities. They did not, and it created a number of problems down the line.

Now, I'm not exactly sure how the whole summer camp mess happened. Take Quzhou as an example. I would say that it's probable that CSETC knew that the conditions in Quzhou were going to be as bonkers as they were. If this is the case, CSETC decided that they should withhold information from us because they knew it was going to upset us. If this is the case, they're a bad organization. There's a second option, though. It's possible that CSETC blindly signed an agreement with the school in Quzhou, and had no idea things were going to be like this. This theory is backed up by Bonnie's surprise at our arrival. If this is the case, CSETC is an incompetent organization. This bad/incompetent question runs through the summer camps, all the way to Guyuan. CSETC had run a summer camp in Guyuan before, they knew what the situation was like, but they failed to tell us that we wouldn't have proper TAs, or that we wouldn't have a place to do the activities they spent so much time training us on how to properly perform. Now, it's possible that they didn't tell us to keep us from doing anything before it was too late. Bad. Or it's possible that they didn't realize that we'd need proper equipment and facilities, despite knowing those things did not exist at this location. Incompetent. It comes up in almost all of their business practices. It's possible that their application isn't intentionally deceptive, and that they just never updated it after half the cities listed were no longer options. But that would just make them incompetent.

There is one clear situation wherein they were clearly not incompetent, and it was just before I was shipped off to here. I was in the head of the program's office with Miles, and I openly questioned if sending me here wasn't a good idea, after all, I applied for Chengdu. Irene promptly swept the comment under the rug, mentioning things about the rich history of Jiangxi and the high level of the students here. “But Chengdu is a city, and Lichuan is so awful people specifically requested not to be placed there!” I finally blurted. I did not get a real response.

Now, don't get me wrong, I know there are cultural differences here. For example, the senior staff at CSETC can't understand why I'm not happy here. “The school is great!” they say. The school is not the issue. What CSETC fails to realize is that we're not in this to teach, we're in this for other things, like the ability to have adventure, experience new things, and to be able to enjoy ourselves outside of work, and those other things don't happen here. But that's not how they think about it. For them, if you're happy at work, everything's dandy.

If the point of CSETC was something other than the placement of Western teachers in Chinese schools, I'd be pretty lenient with them on all of this, but it's not. They want to make money off the fact that they can deliver real, live Americans, and if they want to do that, they have to be able to understand why there's people in the organization that are not happy. But they don't, and that makes them an organization completely unsuitable for the business they're in, regardless of if they're bad or simply incompetent.

But that's enough about them, let's talk about me. If you haven't noticed, I haven't really written much since my arrival at Lichuan #1 Middle School, and that's because not much happens to me here. I feel as though I'm stuck in a state of suspended animation. I'm not growing as a person, I just show up, teach for a bit, and then piddle away my time until I have to teach again. It's a low growth, low change environment, and I know it's a product of this location because every time I get away from here I feel more alive, even if it's just the standard ex-pat Friday night. Before I had that... man were things ever bleak.

But like most good trips away from home, it's taught me where I want to be, and who I want to be with, and I suppose that makes it worth it in some twisted way. That having been said, this is something that I never want to do again in the way that I have done it. Is it possible I might come back to China in a few years? Possible. Would I consider teaching again? Yes, absolutely.

-Cooper

China: That place that annoys you

 When I bought my plane ticket a couple of weeks ago things changed for me a bit more than I thought they were going to. It's a really strange thing, as soon as I knew that I was leaving, my attitude toward this place shifted almost overnight. Before I knew I was taking a United flight out of Shanghai at 4:30 PM on January 11^th, I thought that I had finally found an odd contentedness here that could sustain me through the end of the year. We had met a bunch of new people, and things seemed pretty alright. However, today... China annoys the hell out of me.

I'm going to start my story with this morning, but it goes earlier than that. You see, my morning started out with a twist. As I got out of the shower around 9 AM, I heard a knock at my door. I yelled to wait while I put pants on, thinking it was one of us, but it was a student. He opened the door, catching me halfway through putting my underwear on. This left him oddly unfazed. He came back later and talked at me in a language that sounded like English, but I'm not sure. The thing is, this isn't the first odd run-in I've had with him. Last week he tried to drag me out to lunch with him, which I had to turn down because I had a meeting. Then he barged in while we were watching The Last Waltz and told, not asked, Miles and me that we were going to Beijing with him in three days, and then to Wenzhou, where his father owns a sofa factory. We refused. Now he just shows up at my door, talks at me, and then leaves. I kinda want to strangle him. He wants us to help him to go to USA, so that he could live in New York and be the next Steve Jobs, and he thinks that we somehow have significant pull at higher learning institutions. I can't tell if his pushy optimism was him being a teenager, or what I should expect from the new generation of Chinese kids. Time will tell, I guess. Other random encounters have been frustrating, but they're scattered at best.

Time with the ex-pats has been great, and thanksgiving was as wonderful of a time as any of us could have hoped for. Nic cooked from 6 AM until 4 PM, making almost every thanksgiving staple you could think of. I made my mom's potato salad, and it was beloved by all, despite the awful Chinese mayo. Every American in the area came out, including the Mormon high school graduates on a mission trip that are teaching in a school way further out there than ours. They were as goony as you'd expect 18 year old Mormons to be, but they were good company, and the usual ex-pat suspects were there, along with a smattering of Chinese students, and we ate and drank, and spent the evening teaching the Chinese girls American drinking games. They were awful at Categories.

The next morning I woke up, vomited, and chalked it up to drinking shitty Chinese beer all day. However, I soon discovered that beer was not the issue, as my fever spiked after puking. I tried to keep down a vitamin water, but I wound up puking up a little blood. After that, I slept most of the day, and most of the next, although by Monday I was able to keep things down. The blood only happened once, and I didn't do anything about it, because there is no place I want to be less than a Chinese hospital. Ish's adventures are living proof of that. By Tuesday I was fine. Let's hope that's the last time that happens.

I'd like to close by getting angry about CSETC again. Annie came for a meeting last Wednesday, and Irene was here on Monday. I missed the Monday meeting because I was dying at the time, but if it was like the meeting with Annie, it was unproductive at best. We rattled off our laundry list of complaints and problems, and were met with the same side-stepping and buck passing as always. Sometimes they say they're going to fix things, but they don't seem to understand that trust is something that you have to earn from us, and they have failed at earning any during our time here. I've seen no actual changes from the organization, and I doubt I will. They're trying desperately hard to get Miles to go to Beijing, and the other three teachers found out why on Monday. CSETC used to be a government organization, but they've had their funding cut, so they're teachers running a business on our white faces, and calling it something else. They also seem to be having cash flow problems, and so they're getting desperate. Two other CSB/SJU students decided not to come next semester, and CSETC sent them and email two days ago saying that everything was fixed, and that “we really need you help”. Our experience suffers because of it, and I can't imagine what's going to happen next semester, when all but three of the current teachers go home.

I'll get to writing about Guangzhou when I feel like it, ok?

36 days until my contract is up, 41 until I'm home,

-Cooper

An Update?!

It's been a long time sine I've decided to sit down and write some sort of update on what is going on in my life, and I feel like a lazy piece of shit because of it. Granted, the problem started because in honestly didn't have a whole lot to write about. I'd wake up, teach class, go to Chinese class three times a week, go for a run, dink around the Internet and go to bed. That was my life here for about two months, and you can imagine that it didn't really give me much to talk about, much less to write about, so I developed writer's inertia, I term I just made up. The thing is, my routine has changed for the better, but I've maintained that inertia until now, and I'm done with it. I'm here to tell you what has changed.

For one, we found other ex-pats, and as it turns out, they're a great group of people. Every Friday we get together at a restaurant near the local university and drink beer and talk. Their students will show up to practice their English, and it's generally a good time for everyone. The group is a wide range of ages, from Dave, who's a New Zealander somewhere north of 45 years old with a Chinese wife named Catherine, to folks our age. Actually, the story of how we found out about this group is pretty good. The four of us were wandering around Fuzhou looking for a restaurant, and Vang happened to see Nic in a drink shop. Vang said ”I think I just saw an American”, and we all froze, completely unsure of how to approach the situation. Fortunately, Nic saw us as well, and was equally amazed. We exchanged phone numbers, and now we have people to talk to. We were invited along for Catherine's birthday last Saturday, and I think she took a certain delight in ordering the weirdest dishes possible. I had duck and pig stomach, snails, and congealed pig's blood. The blood actually tasted like tofu, which is odd.

I also had an “oh well, what the hell” moment, and asked one of the teachers out, a 22-year old woman named Pansy. I think she's purdy. This turned out to be a completely different experience than I thought it would be. I asked her out to dinner, and made it clear that it was going to be just the two of us. This seemed like a date to me, and I thought I had done a decent job at communicating this to her. Apparently I failed, as she invited along her friend and her friend's six year old son. Whaps. We went to a pretty neat restaurant, though. Picture a buffet, but instead of cooked food, it was just cuts of meat (They had bacon!). You pick out the ones you want to eat, and then take them back to your table, which has a skillet in the middle, where you fry whatever you want. Also, all you can drink beer is included in the price. I have to go back when I'm not trying to impress someone. Anyway, once her friend and the kid left, I asked if she realized I was asking her out on a date. She had no idea. I laughed it off, and we had a great time walking around town and talking. At the end of the night, she invited me to lunch at her house... with her mother.

Lunch turned out to be completely alright. Her mom can cook, and the 9 students that she rents out her apartment to were very nice during lunch, and it only took twenty minutes to get photo time over with. After all the students had left, we spent a long time sitting on the couch and talking about relationships in general. As it turns out, she's firmly focused on marriage, and not just marriage, but marrying a man of means. This is the norm for China, unfortunately. The good news is that she's really cool, and I really like hanging out with her. Friend made!

There's other little things that I could talk about: our fast food disaster tonight, making Chinese kids argue about what art is, and any of the other stories that get lost in the bustle of my day, but I honestly don't feel like it right now, as I would rather talk about baseball with Jimmy, so I'm going to leave it at this, and leave on the note that I'll write up my trip to Guangzhou when I feel like it.

See you all in less than two months,

-Cooper

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Over the past week a few things about our relationship with CSETC have become obvious to me, and none of them are good. I have engaged CSETC in a battle over my contract, one that if I was back home wouldn't even be a question. Vang had her wallet stolen on the bus, and CSETC's response and the circumstances surrounding it say an incredible amount about CSETC as an organization. To say that I'm frustrated with things here would be an understatement.

The contract situation is cut and dry. It is written in my contract that if I am not paid on time, the contract is breached, and I am entitled to three months salary and freedom from the contract. We are supposed to be paid on the tenth of each month, and that day came and went, and I was willing to let it slide because Margo was in Beijing. We had a meeting with her on the 14^th, and the question of payment came up, among other things. Her response was “Maybe tomorrow, I'll bring it up at my meeting with the headmaster.” This was completely unacceptable. And so, angry with rage, I went back to my room, and drafted up this letter:

“Irene and Annie,

I'm writing you today to tell you that those of us here in Jiangxi have not been paid in time, and according to section 4.2.2 b in our contracts, this constitutes a formal breach of contract, as we have not been paid on time in any way. I'm not looking for the situation to be resolved, I'm looking to obtain the breach penalty (3 months salary and cancellation) as defined in section 4.4. This is a clear cut case, as it was not an unpredictable or unavoidable situation. I will be awaiting your response.

Cooper”

Later that night, I received this response:

“Cooper,

I have read your email and had contacted with the school, they said they will do it as soon as possible. While you stay there you are a member of the program and the team, I hope you could give more understand to your team members.

Irene”

This might be the most insulting letter I've ever received. Was I angry when I got it? You bet! But I've decided that the one thing that I have to do with this situation is to keep my cool, and to maintain the cold, legal tone that an argument about a contract deserves. So, with some help by Grant Gibeau, I drafted this:

“Irene,

I'm not sure you understand the concerns I'm trying to voice. The terms governing our relationship are defined by the contract CSETC and I both entered into, it is not a place where compromise happens, it is a place where its terms dictate the results. I have not been paid on time, and the consequences of this are clearly stated in the contract. I am simply asking for the things that I am entitled to within the legal framework that you have created and I have agreed to. The results of not being paid are plain and simple, and I am simply looking to get what I am entitled to as an employee of CSETC. To reiterate, section 4.2.2b in our contracts says that we will be paid the agreed amount on time. This has not happened, and because of this section 4.4 entitles me to freedom from this contract and three months salary.

-Cooper”

I haven't received a response, but I've already started drafting a response in my head. Those two sentences said a lot about their stance toward the contract. They don't respect it, and they refuse to uphold it, so if anything I walk away from this fight with the knowledge that the contract doesn't actually matter, and I can largely do what I want. If they don't respect it, why should I? It also gets at something that I've thought was true for a while: they don't actually respect us as employees. They don't see us as people doing a job, they think of us as a bunch of naive kids on some kind of school program. We're continually talked down to, and any legitimate complaints that we have are swept under the rug. Vang's situation yesterday illustrates this quite well.

Margo invited Vang and Kao to her gym yesterday, and Vang arrived to discover that the gym was under construction, and anything that she wanted to do was impossible, and Margo had to go do some damn thing, so they had to take the bus back. Somewhere on the trip someone got into her purse and stole her wallet, which had her ATM card and her PIN number in it. She discovered this, and promptly freaked, as any of us would do. They called CSETC for help, because CSETC opened all of our bank cards, and would know what to do.

Now, this next part requires some back story. Vang went to SCSU, and is the first person from SCSU to come over through CSETC. When Vang called Annie, she got the response that they were too busy, and they would deal with the issue “in a few days”. Now, what were they too busy with? Well, as it turns out, there were a couple people from SCSU that had come over to establish this as a regular program, and CSETC was too busy to deal with the pressing issue of its only employee to have graduated from SCSU because they were trying to impress the delegates into providing them with more Americans they can profit from.

Irene likes to talk about how we're engaging in cultural exchange, and I'm not sure if anyone's buying that anymore. Whenever we encounter something inconvenient or frustrating, it's cultural exchange, and we should be happy that we're getting to experience it. Whenever they're met with American cultural norms like respect for a contract, punctuality in a crisis, or general safety (Melissa caught some kids trying to climb into her window in Beijing, more on that as it develops) they have proven time and time again that they are unwilling to engage in any sort of exchange. They are unfit to run the kind of program that they are trying to run, and when I get back, I'm going to try to talk as many people out of participating in the program as possible.

-Cooper

Shanghai

Since returning to my home/prison of Fuzhou/Linchuan, I've struggled with how to start writing about the myriad of thoughts and experiences I had during my barnstorming three day trip to Shanghai, and I think that the best way for me to do it is simply to say this: Going to Shanghai will probably go down as the best decision I'll make in China. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and I came away from it happier than I've been since coming here, if not longer. I met wonderful people, and I found validation for a lot of my suspicions about my experiences here. The thing is, up until two days before I was supposed to leave, I didn't know I was going to get to.

The one standard piece of ex-pat travel advice for the time around National Day (Oct. 1^st) is simply don't. It's the busiest time for travel in a country of 1.2 billion people, and so anywhere that you go, things will either be crowded, or downright impossible. For a while, I thought that getting train tickets was going to fall into the second category. In fact, Margo told me that it was impossible, and so I had resigned myself to spending a boring few days mostly in my room. Then, one night last week I got word that the headmaster had pulled some strings, and that I was going. Awesome. I had two night trains: one to Shanghai on September 30^th, and one back to Nanchang on the 3^rd. I had a hostel for the 1^st and 2^nd, and I was going alone. I knew next to nothing about Shanghai, and didn't really have much time to research, but the beauty of traveling alone is that you can just do whatever you want, so the lack of plans wasn't a problem.

I left Fuzhou on a bus at 2:10 PM on September 30^th. My plan was to have enough time to explore Nanchang a bit before my train out at 9PM. I had the bus line I needed to get to the train station from the bus station, and I thought that would be enough. I was wrong. The bus didn't drop us off anywhere near the station, which left me in a bit of a spot, as I had no map, and free WiFi isn't really a thing here. I also desperately needed to find a bathroom, so I started walking. I eventually found a fast food place, and bee-lined to the back. Sweet relief. I then continued down the main road, looking for a landmark or something to orient myself by on the hazy map I had in my mind. It quickly became obvious that I was not going to find one, so I took out my notebook for Chinese class, and found the word for train station, and tried to flag a cab. I failed for a while, until a nice old lady in a rickshaw indicated that she had no passengers. I told her “Huǒchē zhàn” she responded with “Shí yuán”, and I was off. (Side note: I wildly dislike people who pepper Chinese characters in with their English writing, so I will always use Pinyin for Chinese. Try to speak along at home!)

My arrival at the train station gave me my first taste of just how crowded of a time I was in for. The army was doing crowd control, and getting anywhere was a pretty difficult time, so I ducked into a McDonald's, and recalled that Jimmy Backes always called the only McDonald's in the town in Ireland he studied abroad as “The American Embassy”. That was about how it felt. I got the first hamburger I've had in what felt like forever, and assessed my situation. I wasn't sure when my train left exactly, and I was going to risk missing it, so I finished my burger and just strolled down the road for a bit. I had a conversation with a Chinese student about the Chinese school system, the school I'm teaching at, and music. I discovered that I'm a teacher at one of the most famous schools in the area, if not all of China, and I told him to listen to more Led Zeppelin. I gave him my e-mail address, and headed into the station. As it turns out, I was early, so I listened to the new Ryan Adams album and read for a while, and then made it onto my train. I was bunked next to a snoring middle-aged man, so sleeping was a bit tough, but I got some sleep, and awoke about 45 minutes away from Shanghai, did my morning business, and was off the train without difficulty.

However, getting to the hostel proved to be a bit harder. The directions that I got were simply “Take the #1 line to People's Square, then the #2 to Nanjing Rd. (E). Take a cab to 450 Jiangxi Road.” Like a moron, I only read the first part, and hopped onto the metro. As it turns out, the Shanghai metro is way nicer than the one in Beijing, and I had a really pleasant trip. Once I got off, I checked my directions and mumbled damnit. Fortunately for me, one of four Apple stores in China was just a block down the road, so I hopped onto their WiFi, fired up Maps, and soon discovered I just needed to be a street over. That would have been helpful in the directions.

The hostel its self was actually really nice. My room was two bunk beds and a table, and I got a mattress for the first time since WuDan. My sheets were new every day, and I didn't ever have problems with my neighbors. Plus, it had a really nice bar/cafe where I could get real coffee, breakfast, and beer for super cheap. It also functioned as a rallying point for nightlife and a damn good place to meet people. More on that later. I dropped my backpack in a locker, took a quick shower to wash that train feeling off of me, and decided to go out and see what I could see.

My monkey brain automatically took me back to the subway station that I got off at, which sits at the end of the biggest shopping street in Shanghai, East Nanjing Road. With a general stance of “Eh, why not?” I started walking, going in and out of shops as I saw fit. However, it was also 9 AM, so there wasn't a whole lot open. The other end of the road is a park called People's Park, and I wandered into a Starbucks on the edge of it to get more coffee into my sleep deprived brain. Realizing that things wouldn't be going in the park until significantly later in the day, I decided to walk all the way back down East Nanjing Road to the Bund and walk down the river.

The Bund is a really interesting place. Back in the days of old Shanghai, the Bund was the international area, where the traders and European banks were, and the architecture there reflects this. It's right on the river, and directly faces the Pudong, which is the area of Shanghai that everyone associates with the Shanghai skyline. It's a really cool place to visit, and much like a majority of Shanghai, if you're not really paying attention, you can really easily forget you're in China at all. It felt quite a bit like Chicago, actually. It was interesting to realize this, because it brought back something that my old adviser, Anthony Ndungu, once said to me: “The thing about cities is that if you can live in one city, you can live in any of them. All of them have the same general culture and the same feeling. You can get whatever things you're used to, and meet people that speak your language no matter what.” After this last weekend, I can't help but get the feeling that he might have been right.

I walked down the river until the nice old buildings were replaced with modern glass towers, and I soon found myself standing at an escalator that led down to an underground mall. The sign said they had a Burger King, and if you haven't noticed, I was more than willing to enjoy western food without the standard guilt that travelers feel walking into a place they could just as easily go to at home. The thing is, there wasn't a Burger King, or at least there wasn't one that was open yet. So I got a bowl of noodles and a big slab of pork for lunch, and washed it down with a surprisingly large Heineken. Realizing that I had nowhere else to go along the river, I turned back and decided to check out the park.

A funny thing happened while I decided to go walk down the river – everyone in China decided to go out for a stroll. I seriously have never seen so many people in my life, and being in that sea of people was a completely disorienting experience, and I was really glad to get out of it and into the slightly less crowded park. The park was a park, and as such is much better with photos than words, so I'll just say that it was a very nice park and leave it at that. I walked back to the hostel and decided that a nap was in order.

I awoke an hour later feeling refreshed, which after the train ride and walking for five hours, felt really good. Realizing that I had no plans for the night, I decided to head to the cafe/bar and see what was going on. I brought my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and probably read about three pages before I challenged a guy who was playing pool by himself to a match. He introduced himself as Darren, and said he was from Liverpool, but was teaching in Inner Mongolia. He found it hard to believe that my parents had gone to Liverpool for a part of their honeymoon. I got my ass kicked, but I met someone, damnit! Just as we started our second game, the two other guys he was with showed up, Ben and Andrew. Ben was from outside of Manchester, and we had a large overlap in terms of media interests, and we got along really well. Andrew was from St. Louis, and it was great to run into another American. Most of the people that I met were from places other than the States, and it made me wonder why. As far as I can tell, America needs a global boogeyman for its population. Something to fear, someone to compete against. It the past, it was the USSR. Further back, it might have been Britain or the broader concept of Europe. Now, it's China, and granted, China isn't scary the same way that the USSR was, but it's just scary enough to deter people from traveling and living here. Either way, Darren, Ben, and Andrew would become my nightlife companions for the rest of the trip.

We sat around for a bit, chatting and drinking coffee. I ordered a club sandwich, which was delicious and featured real, not super sweet bread. Beer was ordered, laughs were had. We met a couple from the Netherlands that were traveling around the world. China was their first stop, then they were heading down Asia to Australia and New Zealand. Then they were going to go from LA to New York in a RV, hitting up all of the music spots in the south. They didn't know about Austin, TX as a big music tow, so I filled them in and told them about SXSW, which they should be in the area for. I hope they have a good time. More beer was ordered, more laughs were had. We were invited over to the table of a bunch of other young teachers that were in Shanghai for the holiday and talked about our experiences and the difficulties that we have had/are having. Eventually, one of Darren's old friends from Liverpool showed up from a different hostel, and we decided, after figuring out that we didn't have a curfew, to head off to a club.

When I say a club, I actually mean a bomb shelter. It was cool as hell. We nearly missed the place when we were walking down the road to find it . It was just a sign and a door, and a staircase leading down to a tunnel. Passing through the tunnel, you arrive at more or less what you'd expect a bomb shelter to look like. It's dark, the ceilings are low, and you can't help but think that you expected it to be bigger, but then you wonder exactly why you expected it to be that way. It's also loud and smokey, but that's really just par for the course for any bar/club in China. It was drum and bass night, and we got there around 11PM, which is apparently pretty early by Chinese club standards, so we all got drinks and headed for the back. All of the couches were occupied, so we just kind of hung around hoping something would open up. Soon after, we were approached by a man I can only describe as being the archetypal New Jersey male.

His name was Kai, and he was short, muscular and had no hair anywhere on his body. He was an engineering professor at a university in Shanghai, and he spoke aggressively, confirming that he agreed with what I was saying by exclaiming “Bin-go!” when I finished a statement. We talked at length about the Chinese real estate bubble and the Chinese education system. I'm not going to try to tell our conversation, as we agreed about everything we talked about, instead I'm going to state the observations I've had that he confirmed.

For one, the Chinese real estate bubble is huge, and if/when it pops it's going to make the US bubble look like soap suds. Everywhere I look around the town I'm in, there are giant high rise apartment buildings going up, and at prices that are way out of the league of most Chinese buyers. This seems almost paradoxical, no? It gets worse. If you go out at night and look at the lights that are on in these buildings, it becomes obvious that there aren't that many people living in them. Instead of being used as actual homes, these places are being used as investments by wealthy Chinese from other places. After all, the Chinese bond market is crap, and the stock market is far too risky. So people keep building them, because people keep buying them, because they assume that real estate values will keep going up. It leads to weird empty cities like Ordos City in Inner Mongolia. Now, this seems like the kind of thing that the Chinese government would be taking steps to stop, but they aren't. Land sales are a huge source of revenue for local governments, and construction in China is a leading source of GDP growth. GDP growth is the leading metric of success for local governments, and if it leads to an increase in revenue, even better. So the whole thing keeps growing, people buy because prices go up, and the local governments look good because of it. This is hugely alarming, and it gets worse. Construction is a huge chunk of total employment here, and so if/when it pops (I'm way more on the when side), there's probably going to be widespread unemployment amongst people that are uneducated and lack any sort of other skills. That's bad. I don't know why people aren't talking about it more.

But for as broken as that is, I'd wager the Chinese education system is even more broken, although that might be because I am an active participant in it. The entire point of the Chinese system isn't to create thinkers, it's to create information regurgitatiors. This is because the Chinese education system is pointed firmly at getting people to pass a test, the college admissions test. This test doesn't exist to find out how well you can thing, it exists to see how much information you have in your head, and so instead of having discussions in class, teachers try to cram as much stuff as they can into students heads. This leads to a kind of educational arms race, wherein students are forced to sit in classrooms for more and more time to study and memorize. The school I'm at is a perfect example of this. Kids go to school from 7AM till 10PM, and they do it nearly constantly. Sure, they might get a morning or evening off here or there, but a lot of the time that time is spent studying or doing homework. This educational culture has some dramatic ramifications.

For one, it creates an economy that doesn't seem to make much of anything new. I know I've talked about this before, but it really bears repeating: I have not run into a domestically produced Chinese product that is better than its western counterpart. Kai agreed with me on this, and he said it's reflected in the engineering students that he teaches. They can regurgitate things like nobody's business, but the moment that they have to develop anything new, they're struck dumb. Generally, it takes four times as long for them to answer compared to the American students he's taught before. I've seen the same thing in the students I teach, and I thought it might have been a kind of fluke, but no, it's a fairly standard problem.

The other thing is something that I've seen here, but didn't really run into in Shanghai, so I'm putting it here for the hell of it. These kids are going to school for 15 hours a day, and they're not really allowed to do anything else, and it really affects their ability to socialize. You can see it in the young teachers here, and it's not just them talking to me, it's in the way that they interact with each other. Even though they're in their mid to late twenties, they act like they're sixteen, and I think that's a product of the education system, because I can see it in the students, too. It's in the repetitive questions and the giggles and pushing. However I could be completely wrong about all of this. It's one of the observations I'm the least confident about.

We also discussed intellectual property rights, or the lack thereof, and the many reasons why you shouldn't do business in China, but I've ranted/dorked out enough. Strangely, this was the exact thought that I had when I realized that I had been talking to Kai for an hour and a half in a dance club, so I excused myself and went to dance. I kind of wish I hadn't decided to leave the conversation, because it was way more fun than the dance floor. The DJ was mediocre and wasn't even spinning vinyl, and the crowd wasn't dancing in the least, they were just standing about, trying to look cool. I quickly tired of it, and caught a cab back to the hostel for 32 RMB ($5). We went to the 24 hour store, bought some chips and water, and ate them while talking to a very jetlagged French Swiss girl that had just gotten to the hostel. I crawled into bed around 3:15.

I awoke the next day no worse for the wear, showered, and went downstairs to get breakfast. Man, have I ever missed bacon. Bacon and real coffee sitting outside reading the news on my phone. Darren, Ben and Andrew came down a bit later and we chatted for a bit about the events of the night before. I was planning on going out to wander around for a while, and so I excused myself around noon and went to the metro station. Along the way I discovered that the throng of people on East Nanjing Road had become so big that they had to call in the Army to direct things. It was actually kind of cute to see them blocking traffic in perfect formation, as though it was some kind of drill. It also made me realize that I have never seen a policeman or soldier here that I have felt intimidated by in the least. They almost look comical in their uniforms that make them look to be about sixteen years old, like boys pretending to be real soldiers. That probably says something about how I view Chinese masculinity, but that's a discussion for another time.

I was planning on going to the Pudong, and as the crow flies, it's near enough to walk to, but unfortunately for me, there's a river in the way, so I had to pay the fifty cents for a two minute train ride, which is alright because if there's one public good that China does properly, it's public transportation. Trains and buses are numerous, and are surprisingly easy to navigate. I guess that in a country where car ownership is prohibitively expensive, you have to have a good way of getting people around. The only problem is, the necessity of the system also leads to really high demand, and so I had to cram into a train that was more full than anything I've ever been in. Thanks, national holiday!

I got off the train with the ceremonial air that only comes from accidentally elbowing a kid in the face on your way out. Nobody seemed to mind, especially the kid. I took the escalator up, and soon discovered that I had taken an elevator to what seemed like the future. The Pudong is incredible from an architecture standpoint, all tall glass buildings and clean streets. The Oriental Pearl TV Tower probably helps with the future feeling. It's that crazy orby spire that inevitably shows up when anyone talks about modern China and Shanghai. More about it later. I decided to move away from where all of the people were, and I ended up finding a peaceful little park in the middle of all of the glass and steel. I walked around it, took some photos, and enjoyed not being around people for a while. I managed to find the classiest mall I've ever been in, and felt completely out of place in a western shirt and band t-shirt. I quickly exited.

With no other place to go, I entered the crowd. I walked to the TV tower, and somewhere along the way, I realized something: Nobody was gawking at me, nobody even cared that I was there. It was an amazing feeling, and it might actually have been the best part of my trip. The ability to be ignored is something that we don't really think about, largely because it's something that we can take for granted when we're around a bunch of people that look like us. But it's also something I haven't had for three months, and to have it return even for a little bit was great. Armed with this knowledge, I went to the only place with food I could find, McDonald's. I wound up sharing a wordless table with a middle aged guy, which was way less awkward that it sounds, and headed off to the TV Tower.

The TV Tower is just a huge tourist trap. I know that I should have seen it coming, but I didn't until I got there. To even get close to is you have to pay $20, and that just wasn't worth it to me. I got a peek in from the elevated sidewalk outside. There was a stage show going on with guys in top hats singing and dancing, and that's just not my scene, so I waked down by the river, and stared at the Bund for a bit. I went to a mall to try to find something worth buying as a souvenir, and failed miserably. I did find an MLB store, but it was all Yankees stuff. Boo. I caught the train back to the hostel and took a power nap to prepare for the evening.

I walked downstairs to find Darren, Ben and Andrew plying pool. After a few games, the question of what to do for dinner came up, and a plan was crafted. We were going to find the only TGIFridays in China, and eat at it. Unfortunately, this plan was crafted without a time that we were going to go out, and drinks were ordered. As you could guess, we never actually made it to TGIFridays. However, this did lead to us meeting up with one of the more colorful characters, Eleanor.

El was a South African woman that was in Shanghai for vacation, just like the rest of us. She comes from a rather interesting background. For example, she's on Youtube engaging in police brutality. This threw up a red flag in my head too. As it turns out, in South Africa you aren't paid to be a police officer, you just get to protect your family. There was a guy who was giving her trouble, so she roughed him up and threw him in a paddy wagon. This is apparently how the law works there, at least in some fashion. She also told us about her mother, who goes out every Sunday afternoon and fires her shotgun in the air three times, just to prove she still has ammunition. I see this two ways. One, it's possible that things actually are that bad in South Africa, and that's just kind of the reality of the situation. It's also possible she's a right-winger, and would be considered crazy in her country. I don't know enough to pass any sort of judgment, but I do know the whole thing kind of creeps me out. She was a riot, though, and she wound up joining our group for the night. We also met a couple of German travelers, a woman who's name I've forgotten, as she left town at 9PM that night, and a guy named Andy that I spoke conversational German with. And here I thought I wouldn't use German here. They had spent some time in the hostel we went to in Qufu, and were equally flabbergasted by the lack of things to do there. The Swiss woman also joined up with us, despite her jet lag. As it turns out, she's in the country to apprentice for ceramics. I name dropped Richard Bresnahan, but to no avail. At least I tried.

The night went on, and we decided to go to a bar on the roof of a building in the Bund. The view was fantastic. It looked out on the lights of the Pudong, and was exactly what I wanted from the visit. Granted, it was $10 for a drink, but we went with the understanding that we'd just have one, and then head back to the hostel. The bar was way out of our league, and with the way we were dressed, we'd have been laughed out in most other countries, but the nice thing about China is that if you're willing to pay, they're more than willing to have you around for a while. We stayed around and generally enjoyed feeling posh with our hooded sweatshirts and dirty pants, which is the point of the situation we had created, I suppose. When we got back to the hostel, the bar was about to close, and we joined up with another group of expats and headed to an all night club in the French Concession. We spent the night dancing and carrying on, and around 4:30, I decided to grab a couple of the guys and get a cab.

Living in China has made me distrust cabbies, and this experience is the cherry on top. We got in the cab, gave him the address, and off we went. Except he didn't turn his meter on. I noticed this, and tried miming that he needs to turn the damn meter on. Several fuckwords were exchanged, and eventually I got the point across, and a crisis was adverted. The rest of the ride was completely uneventful, and I crawled into bed as soon as I got to the hostel.

I woke up the next morning, showered, and went downstairs for some much needed coffee. Slowly, everyone that went out the night before filed down into the cafe, and some were doing better than others. We spent a few hours sitting around and joking, trying to work up the motivation to do something with our days. Some of us were leaving town that day, and others were just going to move to a different hostel. At some point, the TV caught all of our eyes, and for good reason. Chinese game shows are super weird.

The Japanese have a reputation for having cruel and unusual competitions, but it would seem that China's giving them a run for their money. The show we watched was a kind of international competition, with each team coming from a different country. The standard rounds were pretty weird, with the contestants wearing different top-heavy animal costumes racing the wrong way around a circular track, or climbing on top of each other to reach a goal. But the real gem was the final round. I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but I do know that it involved several contestants being knocked about by a real bull in a replica of a bullfighting ring. There was some sort of goal that involved crossing the ring, but it didn't really make sense.

When the show was over, I gathered my things and said goodbye to everyone. I had one goal for the day: find a payphone and call Mr. Wang, a friend of the headmaster here who had my return ticket to Nanchang. This task proved to be much harder than I thought it would be. I walked around for two hours trying to find a pay phone I could use, and had no luck. Were there payphones? Absolutely, but you needed a China Telecom card to use them, and that was something I definitely didn't have. I found two payphones that accepted money, and both were broken in their own special ways. One had a jammed coin slot, and the other refused to actually make a call. After making a large circle around Shanghai, I returned to the hostel, and did what I should have done in the first place – used their phone. I spoke with Mr. Wang's son, and arranged for him to meet me at the hostel. I spent the next three hours divided between going to Subway for dinner and reading.

Then at 7PM, Mr. Wang arrived with his son, and I was off to the train station. As it turns out, Mr. Wang speaks very little English, but we did manage to make connections over the Minnesota Timberwolves and the little Chinese I knew how to speak. His son was far more talkative, and in the relatively short time I talked with him, I learned a lot about him. His father runs a power plant, and he's in school for electrical engineering. He's kind of inheriting the family business, and he's not very happy about it. We chatted for a while about other things, and he was a pretty interesting guy. They dropped me off at the train station, refused my payment for the tickets, and said goodbye. They were great.

Speaking of great, the Shanghai South train station is pretty great. It's like a giant circus tent that trains come out of. There's shops around the outside, and in the middle are the gates to the platforms, which is way better than the elephant poop you'd probably find at the middle of a real circus tent. I did a lap around the perimeter, and found a mobile phone charging station. Having two hours until my train, I decided to use it. It was here I met the oddest person of my trip.

You see, there was a woman that was already waiting for her phone to charge, and as soon as she saw me, she started to laugh. She laughed so hard that she nearly fell over in her crouching position, and every time she'd look at me, she's laugh more. This laughing continued for the 10 minutes that I charged my phone, and then when I left, it stopped. I never did find out why she was laughing, but everyone else was creeped out by it, so I think she was just an odd duck. The rest of my stay in the train station was uneventful.

I got on the train okay, and continued to read. When I travel, I've come to hate finding out who I'm bunking with, as they're generally over 40, and in China, that means you're probably a huge pain in the ass. However, this time I got lucky, and wound up with two 20-somethings that were traveling to Fuzhou. One of them actually went to the school I'm working at. We talked until the lights went off about my experiences here in China, and I never saw them again. Sleeping on trains always is awful, and this trip was no exception. I woke up the next morning kinda bleary and drenched in sweat I could do nothing about, and walked out into Nanchang.

Margo told me the bus station was 100 meters from the train station, and she was dead wrong. I wandered for a couple hours, got pretty lost, and hailed a cab, if only to get some direction. A dollar later I was at the bus station, ticket in my hand. I spent most of the bus ride watching the Chinese equivalent of the Earnest Goes to series, and soon found myself home. I showered, and realized that I had an odd kind of optimism about my next three months here. However, that optimism has faded completely by this point, and has been replaced with the same crushing loneliness that I went to Shanghai to get away from. The circle is complete.

I would like to close with one major point that I got from my trip. It's not that I dislike this country, or that I'm going through some kind of crazy, prolonged culture shock, it's the place I'm in. If I was in some place other than rural China, I'm sure I'd be having a blast. As it stands, I haven't had a decent conversation in over a week, and each day I'm greeted by the fact that there isn't a thing to do to keep me occupied here. See you all in three months!

-Cooper

The man with two guitars is very talented

It feels like a it's been a long time since I've written anything, so I figured I might as well put some words out on the screen, if only for the same of getting words out of me. I've fallen into an oddly comfortable routine of teaching and putzing around here. It's weird, for all of the times that I really disliked teaching during the summer, it's one of the few things I really enjoy here. There's something rather fun about the barnstorming way we teach day to day here that makes it new every time. Every time I walk into a classroom, I'm greeted with thunderous applause, like a musician taking the stage, and because I represent a break from the normal monotony of their days, the students are always lively and attentive. If a lesson works, it really works, and if it doesn't work, nobody seems to mind. This creates a certain security that lets me take risks in class, so even if I'm teaching the same lesson from a book, I can try to put a spin on it without fear of getting a completely blank response. The flip side to this is that I'm never really sure what level the kids will be at. Fortunately, there's always a few kids that are really good that I can lean on to get through tough times.

I realized the other day that every class that I teach is bigger than my graduating class in high school, and that's kind of a mindblowing number for me. It's good in some ways, as it means there's going to be at least a couple people that stand out, as I mentioned earlier, but it can also mean that there's forty kids that have no idea what's going on. This has made me realize that although I should always do my best to reach out to everyone, sometimes you have to just teach to those few that actually understand. It's a balancing act for sure, but it's something that I'm getting used to. Except in International class.

The International class is its own special monster. These kids are supposed to be taking the TOEFL exam in the near future, and so they're taking this class to try to give themselves a leg up on the test, and for some of them, I have no clue how they think they have a shot at passing it. I've taught classes where I'm almost completely sure that they understood nothing that happened for the whole hour. We'll see how long they last. International class is also difficult because I don't think that anyone here understands that we're not real teachers. The school expects us to build a coherent semester of lessons as a group, and that's not something we have any real training in, so we're doing our best to just make it up as we go along, although we'll see how that goes.

That having been said, I've been trying to have fun with them as well as teaching. For class this afternoon, I said to hell with academic pursuits and the TOEFL, and taught them about Rock and Roll instead. This was met with a mixed, mostly positive response. Thanks to a very helpful tip from Amy Stubblefield, I decided that the best way to teach what's admittedly a very wide topic in an hour was video, and that the videos should be as iconic as possible. As such, I played them a version of Johnny B. Goode from the 50's, Elvis singing Blue Suede Shoes, the Beatles first performance on Ed Sullivan, The Who blowing themselves up on the Smothers Brothers, Stairway to Heaven from The Song Remains the Same, Elvis Costello doing Radio, Radio on SNL, Born to Run, The Clash doing Guns of Brixton at the US Festival, and Radiohead doing Paranoid Android on Later with Jools Holland. The Beatles, Zeppelin, and Radiohead went over really well, and may have made fans out of a few people, and everyone was blown away by two things, the response to The Beatles, and Robert Plant's package. At least I'm spreading some culture around here.

My bitching to CSETC apparently has done something, but this being China, it might have achieved the opposite of what I wanted it to. Margo said that she's working on planning more things for us to do, but she also mentioned that one of the things she's planning are lectures, presumably put on by us for the students, which sounds like the opposite of a solution to our concerns. I haven't gotten a response to my second, significantly angrier letter, hopefully that will come soon.

Nothing much else has changed here, and I don't really expect it to. I've taken to counting down the days until I come home, which I'll be doing if I can get out of my contract with CSETC or not. As far as I can tell, they have little respect for the contract, so I'm not going to respect either. I informed them in my first e-mail that I do not want to be placed at a school next semester, and that I want to be switched to a six month contract. In standard CSETC fashion, they didn't even address the request. Fuck 'em, I'll be home in 106 days.

-Cooper

Game Shows Touch Our Lives

Yesterday was an interesting day for me. If you haven't already seen on Facebook, I was a contestant on a Chinese game show. It was a completely surreal experience, not unlike when Bill Murray is a guest on the Japanese talk show in Lost in Translation. I had no prep, no instructions, and everything was in Chinese so it wouldn't have made a difference. Best part is, I won, and they want me back on again. Being white has even more perks here than it does in America.

After dinner yesterday, I decided to go into town by myself and wander around in the bind hope that I would find something interesting going on. I had seen signs everywhere around town advertising something going on from the 16^th to the 18^th, and although I was pretty certain it was an event related to real estate, I figured going and poking around wouldn't hurt. I got off at the 1^st KFC, and planed at just wandering about while listening to Kicking Television, and as soon as I got off the bus, I noticed a cluster of people and decided to check it out.

When I arrived, I couldn't see anything, despite being a good four inches taller than most people. As I tried to get a better look, a woman came up to me, and thoroughly surprised me by speaking English. She explained that she was a TV producer, and asked if I wanted to be on the show. As Frank Zappa sings in Camarillo Brillo, “Well, I was born to have adventure”, and I agreed. She said she'd explain the game (she did not), and taught me two phrases in Chinese, both of which I forgot. Fortunately, I got a look as what was going on, so I was good to go for actually playing the game. Then, it was time for me to play.

I emerged from the crowd, and I could feel people being surprised by me. I exchanged some words with the host as a kind of prep that accomplished nothing, and then the cameras started rolling. This is where things start to get weirder. She asked me many questions in Chinese, some of which were understood, and most of which were not. She taught me two phrases that were most definitely directed at her: You're beautiful and I love you. Everyone laughed, and I'm pretty certain that everyone thinks I'm real dumb, but I get that feeling from most of my interactions. Then, the other guy was introduced in a far briefer fashion than I was, and it was time to play the game.

The game was pretty simple. The Chinese guy and I were tethered together with a bungee cord and placed between two tables. We had to pull against each other to get to these tables, and on these tables were blocks. The objective was to build a structure with these blocks before the other guy. We started, and I was doing pretty well until he started to pull a little harder, and my Chucks slipped, sending me stumbling back at him at bungee speed. I crashed into his back with my face, and he seemed super miffed, and kinda gave up on the game, allowing me to build with no problem. Victory! More things were said in Chinese, and I was given a choice of many envelopes. I grabbed one, and won 50 RMB and two boxes of juice. The host asked me if I knew what the money was. She definitely thinks I'm dumb. The producer took my name and e-mail address, and declared me to be very charming.

Afterward, I wandered confused through an outdoor home improvement expo, and had my presence cause a minor disturbance at an outdoor children's concert. Today I woke up at 1 PM, ate at KFC, and discovered a pagoda a couple miles from the school. China is weird.

-Cooper

The Subtle Art of Panic

I come bearing not depressing news for a change. As it turns out, the kids at this school are super sharp, and are really fun to teach. They all have interesting opinions, and are surprisingly articulate, and getting discussions going has continued to be far easier than I thought it would be. This is, of course, assuming that you know how to push them the right way. Chinese kids don't really speak up, so you just kind of have to put them on the spot and force them to talk. But once they stop trying to pretend that you didn't call on them, they have things to say, and good reasoning behind them. I've taken to posing the same question to every class that is starting the Life in the Future unit: Do you think that the East and West are moving together as cultures, or will they maintain their distance? The answers are good, and they obviously understand the question, although they're prone to falling back on blind nationalism in their reasons. Also, the first kid to speak generally decides the opinion of the class, but that might just bee a teenager thing, and not a Chinese thing.

I've recently discovered that I'm really good at classroom improvisation. Take my first international class as an example. I was supposed to have an article on capitalism for them to read and discuss, but I went to the office, and found that not only was it locked, the key I thought would open the office does not. This didn't seem like a big deal to me, because we have a computer in every classroom, so throwing an article up on the projector and having them read it that way was a valid option. Except it wasn't. The computer chest has a lock, and we don't have the key. Boo. So, I realized I had to think on my feet.

I'm doing discussion, so why not teach them about debate and discussion? That'll work. Go over points and rebuttals, and the structure of a discussion. Why do they look so bored? Oh, they've already learned this. Shit. Well, let's do a debate. What topic? Uh... Jesus, what would they know? Bieber. Who likes Justin Bieber? You two? Ok, you're going to be arguing that he isn't the greatest pop star. You hate him? Good. You're arguing that he is the best in the world. You have fifteen minutes to prepare. Go!
This worked flawlessly. They all loved it, they debated well, and I now know what they're capable of. Plus, I get to save the article for next class. CSETC has asked all of us to write 500 word essays on our jobs and difficulties, and I'm going to be brutally honest with them, and I really hope it makes alarm bells go off back in Beijing. In fact, I'm going to cut this a bit short so I can start writing it. I'll post it up when I'm done.

-Cooper

In the future, everyone will be fat and ride everywhere in cars with wheels in an X shape

I had lotus and rice for dinner tonight. This was not an adequate meal by any means, but that's Chinese cafeterias. It's damned cheap, too. That having been said, I miss cheeseburgers. The best that I can do here is KFC, but it just doesn't feel quite right. If I only ate at t he cafeteria, there is no doubt in my mind that I would end up completely malnourished, so I'm supplementing with fruit and such. There's actually a really great local citrus fruit that tastes like a smaller, sweeter grapefruit, and I've been enjoying too many of them.

For the past few days teaching has been delightfully spontaneous. It all started yesterday, when I was just getting out of the shower. I had a meeting with Margo at 8:30, and didn't have to teach until ten, or so I thought. As I contemplated putting pants on (something that is debated fairly frequently, actually) I heard I knock at my door. It being around time for the meeting, I thought it was Miles. It was actually the teacher I was teaching for that day, a young woman who goes by the name Lobster. I don't get it either. It's possible she's a B52's fan. Anyway, I answer the door in a towel, and there was a solid second of awkward that resulted. I swear you could feel it through walls. As soon as I had a full grasp on what was going on I told her to wait there, and that I was going to go put some pants on. She happily agreed as I was closing the door. Once I had dressed myself she explained that she screwed up, and that I had to teach RIGHT NOW. We collectively hauled ass to the classroom, and everything went off without a hitch. After class, she offered to let me use her car any time I wanted, which spurred a lively discussion of traffic laws and why I'm terrified of ever having to drive here.

Today was something else, too. I arrived on time, and proceeded to make the terrible instant coffee I drink here. After I finished adding hot water, my plan for the day changed entirely. I was supposed to lead a 'warm up' for a unit, which is a bunch of questions and discussion to get people thinking about the next unit. I had questions, and I had discussion points, and the teacher I was subbing for had a completely different idea. She provided me with a powerpoint, and told me to teach from that because “the students will understand more”. She did not give me time to review it, and I taught by the seat of my pants, completely uncertain of what was lurking on the next slide. And you know what? I hid that fact very well, engaging the students in discussions I didn't know they were capable of, and generally teaching better than I ever have. I might try not prepping again sometime and see what happens, maybe I teach better on my toes. One of the girls in the first class asked me if I was French, which is a new one. Oh, and a fat kid envisioned a bold future without walking. I wanted to laugh so badly, so I think I'll do that now.

I think my behavior is very alarming to traditional Chinese values, judging by the looks I get when I do certain things. For one, I went out and bought beer to put in the beer fridge that was inexplicably provided for me. As I was checking out at the supermarket, several old ladies gave me the stink eye, as though I was injecting heroin into toddlers. I just shrugged. I went running outside of the school compound for the first time last night, and boy howdy does doing that without a shirt on get you some reactions. I nearly caused two traffic accidents, although this being China, that could have just been regular driving. Folks looked on with a combination of disapproval and amusement, and for a while, some guy on a moped tried to get me to race him. I declined.

Tomorrow's my first International class, and I'll be leading my students on a discussion of capitalism (paging Bill Jones). If this goes well, I'm going to have a lot of fun with that class. If it's disappointing, well, that'll just fit with the general pattern of things here. I'm off to go cause more traffic problems.

-Cooper

Jiangxi: a place that has killed my ability to creatively title things

I'd really like to be able to start off this transmission by saying that now that we're all teaching, and things have picked up a bit, we're all going to be okay. That would be a lie. Everything is going just the way that it has in the past, and the crushing boredom and sleeplessness are all there, along with the lingering fear that I was completely right about what my experience was going to be here. I'm going to try to talk about it less here, as it's probably super boring and off putting to read if you're not stuck in the situation, and Aristotle tells me that audience concerns are important in rhetoric.

We found a bar, but not the good kind like you're hoping to find in a place that you hate. The drinks are expensive, especially by Chinese standards, and the atmosphere is not something that really suits anyone. I have never been in a louder room in my life, and I'm counting First Avenue in my list of rooms. There are more lasers in the place than are needed by anyone that owns no discernible cats. The music is also the worst, consisting of terrible re-recordings of old American hits such as Country Roads, but with loud, constant drum tracks and awful synthesizers thrown in, because why not? The one good thing was the owner took notice and bought us all drinks, although we probably disappointed him when we couldn't speak Chinese. Just as we were about to leave, a weird stage show took place, and Miles and I watched a larger woman in short shorts sing songs punctuated by chugging beers that audience members gave to her. Seriously weird stuff.

It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in keeping with the general narrative of my experience here, it was a disappointment. I was awoken by constant firecrackers, which continued through the day. As the sun went down, Vang, Miles and I headed into town to find where things were going on for the festival. We walked down streets, we walked through parks, and eventually made our way to the river. We found nothing, and wound up taking an over-full bus back home. One of Kao's students makes fireworks, and we tried to set one off, but it did nothing, and stayed with the narrative. I went to bed, and fell asleep three hours later.

I taught for the first time today, subbing in for an enthusiastic fellow named Chris. Class went well, but in talking to Chris, I realized that he thinks I'm a complete moron. He lectured me for a good ten minutes on Deng and the Special Economic Zones, despite my eerie ability to finish his sentences when he stumbled and anticipate his questions. I suppose this is how it feels to be a non-native speaker in America, too. I experienced racism the other day, which was neat in a kind of twisted way. I was on the bus, and I had an open seat to my left and another one to my right. Nobody sat down, even when the bus was packed. I just smiled and continued to listen to the new Wilco album, which is really good by the way.

I'm gonna go out and take photos sometime soon, so look for those soon. I still don't have my passport,and it's freakin' me out. I hope it comes soon. Gonna teach more about the United Kingdom tomorrow, a place I know very little about. Don't tell the kids!

-Cooper

Is our children learning?

It's been long enough since I last wrote something that I feel bad for not having written recently, but I'm running into a problem that will probably be a constant one throughout the rest of my four months at this school: I have nothing worth writing about. My days are every bit as humdrum as one would expect them to be, because my writing as thrived on the adventure inherent in moving around every two weeks. The amount of new information that I get on any given day has slowed to a trickle. I haven't done anything important or meaningful for at least a week, if not more. I'd love to keep traveling, but outside of weekends, I don't think I'm going to have all that much time off. Why? Well, Monday is the Mid-Autumn festival, and we're working that day. We're getting three days off in October for National Week, we're supposed to be getting a week.

This may seem odd, but it's actually an important reflection of a lot of what's wrong with the Chinese education system. You see, this is a system that puts quantity far over quality. It's a system that exists almost exclusively to teach to a big standardized test, and as such, kids aren't treated as learners, they're treated as information regurgitatiors. This school takes that concept to an extreme. These kids are in school from 7 AM to 10 PM, and I'm not really sure if they get a day off, and if they do, it's only a day. When I asked about this, one of the teachers simply said, “The headmaster is crazy.” But you know what? In this broken system, it's these kinds of things that get results. This school sends more kids to the top tier of Chinese universities than any other in the province, and they are damn proud of it. I'd say that this is a problem that China is going to have to deal with, but the system is so deeply entrenched that I don't know where they would begin. For my portion of international class, I'm leading discussions every four days, and I'm starting to think that discussion based classes are not going to go over very well here.

The students may be in class all the time, but we are most certainly not going to be. I will be teaching two classes a day, Monday through Friday, for a total of 1.5 hours per day. Every four days I'll be teaching for an extra hour of international class, so as of right now, I'm working a salaried position for 8.5 hours a week, and one week out of four, I'll be working for 9.5 hours a week, and I think that nobody in the world is as unhappy as me to work for so little time for a guaranteed, non-hourly wage. All this really means is more time for me to sit around in a town with nothing to offer me to do in my free time. If I were in Beijing, I'd already have applied for many part time jobs. But this is not Beijing, this is Fuzhou, and there is nobody in this town that requires the abilities that I possess.

And, uh, that's really about it. Things haven't changed here, and I don't really think that they're going to. Life will be as it has been, and that's just something that I'm going to have to adjust to, generally for worse. I've been having trouble sleeping, we'll see if that keeps up. More when I have things worth writing.

-Cooper

Answers and Fear

 I have begun to fear that everything bad that I thought could happen to me in this place, and everything bad and negative that I was worried was true about this place was more or less correct. Even though there is significantly more of a city here than I thought there would be, there is exactly the amount of things to do that I was afraid there would be. We all just sit around our rooms and watch the days pass by. And it's not because we aren't trying to find places to go, because we are. We go out and wander the streets of the city in the hopes that we may find things to do, and we consistently find nothing at all. The weirdest part about it is, I never seem to find people my age. Either there's some place I don't know about, or they just aren't in this town, which would explain a lot. We asked some of the teachers here what they do in their free time, and we got responses ranging from watch TV to read, which was less than comforting for our long term well being. Our main contact here is a woman by the name of Margo, and we asked her if there were any bars or such, and she confirmed there aren't. She actually went on to say that “You wouldn't want to go to one if there was. It's dangerous, you know. They're full of fashionable young people, and you wouldn't have any fun.” I don't think she gets it.

We're learning more about how and when we're going to be teaching, and as it turns out, I'm teaching even less than the 18 hours a week I was expecting to be. Kao and I teach three classes from a textbook every weekday morning. These are the big ones, with about 60 kids per class. They're 45 minutes each, and we're rotating through all of the classes in the grade, so I'll be spending no longer than a week with any group of kids. This makes teaching difficult, and goes to further my theory that we're not here as teachers, we're here as attractions. That's the bulk of our teaching. Our arrangements are better than Miles and Vang, who are in a much bigger grade, and are only teaching two classes a day. They're cycling through all of the students in the grade as well, and it's a much bigger grade. They have no textbook, and will simply be teaching the same four lessons for the entire four month stint. I'm not sure about everyone else, but that sounds like hell to me.

We're also doing an international class in the evening. We're rotating as teachers for this one, so I'll get to teach once every four days for an hour. We're each taking a different portion of English to work on, and I picked discussion, so I'll be going in, giving an article to read, and testing comprehension and leading discussion. This might work, or it might fail miserably. We know nothing about our students, other than that there are ten of them, so their English level might be way below where we want it to be, and given that I have never been pleasantly surprised in this country, I'm prepping to do some scrambling.

I've been running again, which actually feels really good, as long as I'm not walking down stairs. It's so hot and humid here that I have to wait for the sun to go down, but it provides me with some sort of positive from this awful experience. I really hate this place, and thinking about spending four months here makes the walls feel like they're closing in. It's not pleasant here already, and it gets worse every day. I'm worried about the future, and I'm worried about what's going to happen to me emotionally. I've felt depression creeping in already, it kept me up Monday night, and I think it's going to many times to come. These next months are not going to be pleasant.

-Cooper

A Reflection

As of the time of me writing this, I have been in China for exactly two months, taught three summer camps, and coordinated one. I have been to more far flung parts of this country than most Chinese people have. I have possibly touched the lives of hundreds of children in a way that I'll never really understand, sang Brown Eyed Girl for hundreds of people, and climbed the Great Wall. I have been forced by the Great Khan to drink at 6:30 in the morning in a valley in Mongolia. I have gained an incredible amount of cultural understanding and experience from all of this as a person, and I never, ever want to do it again.

I will not deny that what I've done was immensely enjoyable and beneficial for me as an individual, because it most certainly was. In fact, if I could go back in time and talk to myself six months ago, I might even consider telling him that this was a really good idea, and was something that past Cooper should most definitely do. Why? Well, for one, I'm kind of a dick, but more than that this is something that I'm going to remember forever. It would be a different matter to go around again with these experiences. It wouldn't be worth it, not by a long shot, because for each of those really amazing things that I have done, there has been an equally horrible counterpart.

For all of the highs, there were the lows. There was that first night in Quzhou when the girls slept by candle light, and we discovered that we had to shit into a hole and would be without running water for the duration of our stay. I remember the entire room of guys erupting in nervous laughter simply because of how on edge we all were with the situation. Some of us thought we were going to die. I know the thought crossed my mind at least once.

That bad situation gave me a oddly wonderful situation: the first time I had cold water in Quzhou. You see, water had been scarce for a good five days, and all of it was warm. Every day was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and we would all just kind of sit around and sweat in the heat. Then one day, the gatekeeper realized he could make a tidy profit, bought a fridge, and stocked it full of water and frozen treats. I think Logan was the first one who discovered what was going on, and he came running to the rest of us sitting behind the school and said, “Guys, you have to try this, it's cold water. When I first tasted it, I almost cried.” And you know what? I had the same reaction. It was like drinking water for the first time, and it was glorious. I don't think I've ever eaten so much ice cream as I did over the next few days.

Quzhou also had the delightful effect of making the next camp seem like a complete breeze. Inner Mongolia was far and away the best camp that we had. The kids were apparently great (I wouldn't know, I was camp leader for this one), our accommodations were top notch, and most importantly of all nothing changed. We had no demands from the school; we were simply allowed to do whatever we thought was best for the situation, and that freedom was something that we didn't really get anywhere else. It certainly made my job easy. It was also the first time we were allowed to go out and mingle with the locals, and mingle we most certainly did. We were welcomed with open arms into the town square, and also into the house of a local English teacher, which, as it turns out, was a bad choice. That woman followed us everywhere until we left. Inner Mongolia also had the most crying students at the end, and I'm not really sure why. The whole last day was just one big love fest.

Qufu was an interesting time as well. It brought us Don, the soccer players down the hallway, and the youngest students of any camp. Of all of the camps we had, this one went the fastest by a long shot. All of the good stories I have to tell from here have already been told, and not many of them are really worth retelling. I mean, The Incident was scary and interesting, but I've gained no new perspective on it. The soccer kids are still jerks, and Don... well... I don't think we ever had a more demanding or active camp director. Don would spring five minute speeches on the kids, actively chastise them for speaking in Chinese, and cheat to let his kid win. Don was a character, but not necessarily the good kind, like you want someone to be. But Don's demands could easily be met with the facilities provided. They just kind of sprung up out of nowhere and had to be fulfilled. The next camp in Guyuan was a completely different story.

In a lot of ways, Guyuan was a constant struggle. From the very beginning the thing smelled of trouble. We were told that we would be taking a bus to get there. That bus became two vans, and then it became a car and a van that was filled far beyond any reasonable capacity. This was an omen of things to come. We had classes that could only be described as a crap-shoot of student quality, with kids that understood English well sitting in the same room as kids that didn't speak a word of English, which made teaching them a very difficult process. Also, these were far and away the largest classes that we had, so it was difficult to teach and maintain order. This difficulty was compounded by what could be characterized as a misunderstanding between the program and the school, although I would probably use significantly stronger language if I was talking to you in person. You see, the school had said that they would provide teaching assistants for all of us, and when we got there, they didn't really have constant assistants for anyone except Zowahh, who ended up with a really nice young woman from the town that had nothing else to do while waiting for grad school to start. This lack of assistants combined with the wild differences in comprehension levels between classes meant that we were in quite the pickle. But that's not all, folks! A cornerstone of the summer camps are the activities that we do every afternoon, and the school had no place that was adequate for hosting large group activities. Fortunately, the school was more than willing to accommodate our TA problem, and everyone got assistants of varying quality in their classes. Some were great, like my TA Rita, some were not, like Abbie's TA, who would regularly leave class to go take naps. As for the activities, well, different strategies were tried, some worked, some did not. I spent an afternoon yelling bingo numbers at the top of my lungs to a cafeteria, the activity that turned out to be the last straw for our activity experiment for two reasons. One, it kinda sucked, and a lot of kids just up and left, which displeased the teachers. I was fine with it: if they don't want to do it, I don't want to force them to and have them resent it. But the major change that ended it was uniquely Chinese. All of the students we had needed to go out to the track and march and chant slogans for a week, and they had to do it in the afternoon sun. I don't get it either, but it solved things, and got us out of Guyuan.

But that's enough for story time, and probably the longest aside I have ever written. I blame Grand Dragon red wine. You've heard a lot of this before, and all of that wasn't what I was looking to discuss when I sat down to write this. What I want to do with this is to discuss exactly what my introduction paragraph is talking about, because it is, as much as my caveman brain can think about itself, a giant contradiction.

I think that contradiction gets to the heart of my relationship with China. One of the teachers from the program, Danny, who has since returned to the states once explained it in this way, although these words may not be his own: “You go through three stages in your relationship with living here. When you fist get here, you're still in a tourist mindset. Everything is new and strange, and you want to experience it. You feel like an outsider. Then, you realize that this is a place that you live, and that you know how to get around, and it feels kind of comfortable. Then, it becomes a place that you live that annoys you.” He thought that the third stage doesn't end, and it just kind of the endgame for your relationship with that country.

I am currently at that stage, if you couldn't tell already. Take the students that I run into all of the time as an example. When I first got here, it seemed like there was an ice between me and them, some sort of line that wasn't going to be crossed. I saw them, they saw me, and that was it. Maybe they took a photo of me from afar, but there wasn't interaction. Then, they started talking to me, coming up and asking questions, and this felt oddly comfortable. It felt like I was a part of this place, and that I was being accepted in a way. Then it became annoying. Why? The acceptance and ease is a kind of illusion. The kids ask the same questions in nearly the same sequence. Where are you from? What do you think of China? What do you think of Chinese food? I'm sorry, my English is very poor. Why did you come here? Do you know Chinese? Are you going to learn Chinese? And it always follows the same flat trajectory, as though there is some sort of handbook to interaction with foreigners that says that you have to ask the exact same question in the same way. Through things like this, the bland repetition of interactions, you come to realize that you're not really someone that exists here, you're a kind of attraction, a walking sideshow. This extends into the classroom as well. Once the students become comfortable enough with you, they don't want to learn anymore, they want you to entertain them. They want you to sing and dance, like a vaudeville routine. They want to take photos with you so that they can tell their friends that they have white friends because it makes them cool. When you first notice it, it seems off putting, and as it continues, it just becomes annoying.

This same formula also extends, albeit in a different way, to Chinese culture. There are so many aspects of Chinese culture and day to day life that aren't just strange, but counter-intuitive or disruptive to daily life, so much so that we developed a standard saying for when they popped up - “It's the Chinese way!”. Hell, Miles, Logan and Ben wrote a song about it. One of my biggest frustrations, the lack of communication, is a good illustration. At first, you just kind of naturally assume that communication is difficult for a number of non-cultural reasons. Things like the language barrier seem like a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you know next to nothing about anything as you fly into Beijing. Things go on, you sleep on plywood for a week, and you kind of get used to the fact that you're not going to know things, and you feel like you've established some kind of zen in your life, that you can just go with the flow, and the lack of communication will be no big deal. But much like the relationship with the students, this zen is its own kind of illusion, and as time goes by the lack of communication causes all kinds of angst and gnashing of teeth because there's important information out there that would make life so much easier if someone just told it to you. I'm looking at you, semester placements. The zen shatters. When the zen shatters, you're just stuck with another aspect of China that annoys you. I brought this lack of communication up at a meeting after all the camps were done, and the response I got was a blank expression and four words: “That's the Chinese Way.”

There's a whole long list of other examples of the Tourist>Acceptance>Annoyance cycle, but I won't bother with them now. I have bigger fish to fry here.

Somewhere in Qufu or Guyuan, I realized something that's been bugging me ever since, and I'm not entirely sure if it's true or not, but it's a concept that I've jangled around my head enough that I need to get it out. I'm pretty certain that China believes that its best is a second-rate version of the United States. They may not think about it in this way, but whatever way they see things, the outcome is generally the same. It shows in the products, in the creations of Chinese entrepreneurs. I hate to sound like Thomas Friedman, but I have seen very little in actual innovation from anything in China. Every Chinese created product that you run across, every major business is just a Chinese clone of something else, and the Chinese are happy with this. They're all damn pleased to knock down ancient villages to create shiny apartment buildings to try and live like the Westerners they all seem to want to be. And I'm not judging anything about it, but this raises a lot of very interesting questions in my mind.

For one, I think that it says something about the relationship between globalization and culture, for better or for worse. There are still distinct portions of Chinese culture that exist, and will probably exist no matter what. Food's a great example. For all of the American fast food chains you can eat at here, none are the same as they are back home, and none of the passion for American products has reached the kitchen in China. But with everything else, it seems like the 'global culture' is just big steamroller, smashing down distinct facets of a culture and replacing them with the generally American things that are popping up everywhere. And I have to wonder if this is just the way that it works, if the replacement of distinct elements is just the way of globalization, and not a product of the Chinese eagerness to accept economic growth at all costs.

The odd part of that steamroller, and the part that makes me think that there's something more to it, is that it seems like the steamroller is being driven by the Chinese. They're the ones bulldozing villages and relocating people to high-rise apartments they can’t afford to live in as a way of inflating their GDP growth numbers. They're the ones that welcome and encourage the western ways and brands, and remain fiercely, if not blindly, loyal to them. They're the ones that are falling all over themselves to pump out products that are nothing more than second rate versions of the Western ones they have no allegiance to. And they most certainly do that last one a lot, and in very visible ways.

Look at Baidu, China's Google. Try using it, and tell me something that it does that Google didn't start doing first (other than the MP3 search, which is a delightful example of China's general disregard for copyright law). The features are the same, the feel is the same, the layout is similar. The same can be said of RenRen, the Chinese version of Facebook. You can see it in the cars, you can see it in the clothes and the stores and every aspect of public life. I once described it as having everything be close, but just slightly off, and I now know that was something slightly deeper in the culture and the country.

And it's really all of these different things, the cultural steamroller, the Tourist>Acceptance>Annoyance cycle, and everything that comes with it. It's the gawking people, it's the fact that I've been here in Linchuan for four days and I have only received enough information about what I'm doing to fill an index card, and it's the fairly miserable experience that I've had over the past four months that make me not want to ever do this again. But, at the same time, my experiences here have been completely invaluable in my understanding of the world, and I can't say that I would ever want to give them away, or go back in time and take back my decision to come here. And I think that's kind of the heart of the contradiction, knowledge versus experience. I've learned a lot of things that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise, and that's priceless, and that's what's made this whole experience tolerable in a way. We'll see how the next four months go. I think they could be a completely different story.