Personnel Sports Meeting: The Great Leap Forward

Team Morale: A happy Dean Chen Yao, flanked on his right by Vice-Dean Wong and his left by Vice-Dean Wu Yunna, at the conclusion of the Personnel Sports Meeting. Chen Yao is holding the “morale” or “spirit” award won by the International Exchange College (IEC). Since the IEC doubles as the “Foreign Affairs Office” (or waiban), all the foreign teachers at Shi-Da competed with the IEC, even though only myself, Tyler (to my right), and Karen (front row far right) actually teach for the college. The other foreigners in this picture teach for the Foreign Languages Institute. Notice that eight-year-old Samuel Perry Arnold snuck into the photo (second row far right).

Last Friday we had the "Personnel Sports Meeting," or staff sports day. The International Exchange College faculty improved their standing from 17th last year to 10th this year, an advance that Dean Chen Yao, after a few glasses of Chinese liquor at the banquet, dubbed the "Great Leap Forward." My jaw dropped. Was he kidding? I wasn't sure, but I laughed just the same. It was indeed our small Great Leap.

The Personnel Sports Meeting was something that would be unimaginable at an American University Campus. Give all the faculty members racy sweat suits and shoes, the kind that hip-hopsters wear with thick gold chains (think Ali-G). Line them up at 7am in the morning in front of their departmental building and march them in formation into the sports stadium chanting slogans--in our case, "DEVELOP YOUR SPORTSMANSHIP, CULTIVATE CULTURAL AWARENESS, SUPPORT THE BEIJING OLYMPICS." Then tell them that EVERYONE has to participate in at least one event and also cheer on their fellows all day long in events as such as "The Sixty Meter Race for Older Women," and "Relay Race with Balls in Arms." I laugh thinking of the uproar this would cause among the faculty at Columbia Basin College, an unpretentious community college in eastern Washington. I shiver to think what a firestorm such a command would cause at our more prestigious universities. And yet, there we were, faculty all, dressed up in our sweat-suits and participating in the staff sports meeting.

The faculty, staff, and administrators of the International Exchange College cheer on their colleagues.

What was the purpose of the staff sports meeting? Everyone I asked said similar things: to build a sense of community and teamwork among the faculty and staff members; to show faculty spirit; to give everyone a day of recreation and fun that countered their daily grind of classes; to expand and develop our various faculty faculties. A large character sign displayed across the bleachers encouraged faculty to "cultivate your humanity" and "develop yourself in all fields."

It was, in one sense, just a good deal of fun and camaraderie--a day spent with colleagues and friends in competition and cooperation. And yet, there was also a coercive element to the fun. The command was clear: everyone would participate. Most young faculty eagerly embraced the chance to strut their stuff. But it was evident that some faculty members, especially women, were less than thrilled at having to compete. And yet, when called on, they really gave it their all. Fifty year-old female instructors raced around the track in jeans and loafers, heaving their bodies across the finish line, collapsing on the infield grass, having to be dragged away by friends and officials. Put an English teacher in a 4 x 400 relay and watch a human drama unfold that far exceeds anything the Olympic Games, with its finely tuned athletes, can offer up.

The agony of “da feet”: This was serious stuff. I must have seen at least a dozen faculty and staff members collapse after their competitions. No matter how well they compete, these teachers will never make the cover of a Wheaties box, but the heart they show in such games can solidify their position in the work unit, or danwei, which is much more like a community than it is a "workplace" in the American sense.

A common sight: an instructor-competitor being helped from the track by a friend.

The Arnold Family takes 1-2-3 in the “Kangaroo Hop in a Sack” race: Grace Olivia, Samuel Perry, and me.

Afterwards, Chen Yao hosted a banquet for all the teachers in the IEC at the Mongolian restaurant across from the college. The banquet carried on the themes of building community as well as instilling conformity. I found myself with Dean Chen Yao, Vice-Deans Wong and Wu Yunna, Party Secretary Zhou, Tyler, my American colleague, Monica, his Mongolian wife, and Jed, another American who teaches for the Foreign Languages Institute. The liquor and toasts began to flow. After the toasts came the songs. Like at my first banquet, Mr. Zhou again sang traditional Mongolian folk songs. He sang three songs, every one spoken in its entirety beforehand like a poem: "The green valley sparkles under the morning sun. The grasslands--green and wide--welcome you...." And yes, I sang, once again, "Yesterday," which is for some reason the only song I can remember after a few sips of Chinese liquor. I also sang backup to Jed's "Help," and listened while Chen Yao once again gave us John Denver's "Country-Roads" and Wu Yunna sang two Mongolian folk songs.

After about an hour of songs and toasts, eight young female faculty members, all clad in their matching sweat-suits, returned from a work assignment (giving exams, I heard, although I wondered who was taking exams at 9pm on a Friday night during the second week of school). The good-looking, chain-smoking Chen Yao, who, with his stylish clothing and sun glasses, more resembles a GQ model than a college dean, asked everyone in turn to stand up and deliver a song and then paraphrase the meaning in English for the foreign guests. Singing, as with the sporting events, was a show of heart and spirit, and, when called on, the young faculty members threw themselves into their assignments with gusto. But singing, as with the sports, was also required: Chen Yao forced everyone to perform, even those who looked less than thrilled and whose voices could barely be heard above the din of the restaurant beyond the banquet-room door.

Once again, I imagined a similar scenario in the US: the female faculty arrive en masse to the banquet room and sit quietly as the male dean commands each one to stand up and perform songs for the foreign guests. I imagined a riot and a couple really nasty law suits. But here, everyone seemed to take up their responsibilities with spirit and good cheer.

So there it is—Personnel Sports Meeting: the uniforms, the marching, the color, the pageantry, the thrill of victory and agony of "da feet," as my father used to say.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

ESL Teacher

Please Note: The first part of this posting is pretty negative and pretentious, so please read the second half to find the silver lining. Thanks!

A page from my basic English textbook, which demands that my students engage the great issues of the day.

The last two weeks have been busy ones for me: I have begun teaching English to undergraduate students in the International Exchange College here at Shi Da. I am in the classroom fifteen hours a week—more than at CBC. I have five separate classes of between 32-35 students who I meet with two times a week each for three hours total. I am becoming an ESL teacher, an job which, I must admit, I am ambivalent about (no offense to my ESL colleagues at CBC).

I had first imagined that I'd be teaching history here. When the idea of teaching "Spoken English" was raised, I warmed to the idea while speaking to Yongsheng, Arienne, and Philip, a friend of mine who had taught English in Greece back in the 1980s. The impression I got from those conversations was that I could use "spoken English" as a vehicle for talking about ideas and engaging in the kind of cross-cultural interaction that I desired to have during my trip to China. I imagined that I'd be coming to classes and simply speaking with students in an informal way. I figured these students already spoke English reasonably well. They just needed practice talking with a Native speaker. In speaking English, I thought, we could discuss the environment, politics, and culture.

The reality is that "Spoken English" classes here are not what I had envisioned: “This is a subway station” as opposed to “What do you think of the concept of democracy?” The course I teach, "Basic English 1," follows a strict lesson plan. Our textbook asks students such deep questions as "What do you think about online personal ads?" and "Where was Nicole Kidman born? Where was she married?" and "When did she win an Academy Award?"

Ok--so people have to learn how to speak English before they can discuss Foucault's "Pendulum." I realize I sound pretentious, but it is discouraging to encounter full classrooms of students who, despite seven or more years of English, are speaking and comprehending spoken English at a grade-school level or below (they are much better with the written word). To be fair, their English is far better than my American students’ Chinese! And yet, it does feel like banging my head against the wall. I'm just not sure I have what it takes to sustain my enthusiasm through a semester of mindless rudimentary drills: “Everyone repeat: When I was a kid, I used to be very messy, but now I’m very neat.” I clearly have to reform my thinking. Perhaps I should be sent to the countryside to work on a collective farm to learn the value of real labor. For now, I sometimes feel like I'm embarking upon a semester of drudgery (kudos to my ESL colleagues at CBC—you have far more patience than I).

Beyond the elementary subject matter of my classes, I also have this lurking sense that I’m simply another cog in the ESL machine here. Despite the lofty title of “Foreign Expert,” a foreign expert (meaning English teacher) in Hohhot seems to be any warm body, as long as it’s a warm foreign body. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter that I have a Ph.D. in history as long as I’m a native speaker. They could just as easily pick up a foreigner off the street. At Shi Da, I’m lucky to have three college-grads as my colleagues, but only one of them, Karen, a former elementary school teacher from Wisconsin, actually had teaching experience before coming to Hohhot. Tyler, 25, is a business major from Oklahoma who came to China and began teaching English three years ago; Kenneth, 22, just graduated in Public Administration from UNC Lafayette--he's never taught a day in his life. Knowing that any one of my students at CBC could be doing my job here is not an uplifting thought.

So what is the other side of the story? What is the silver lining, despite the obvious fact that this teaching assignment has given me the opportunity to experience China for seven months (which was the main goal anyway)?

For one, I didn’t have ONE STUDENT MISS CLASS during the entire first week of classes (over 150 students). One student was absent from one of my classes on Monday, and he visited me on Tuesday and begged me to let him return to class (he also gave me a box of chocolates). Another student missed on Tuesday of this week: he actually came to class late and then, not wanting to interrupt the lesson, he waited in the hallway for the entire session and then apologized to me immediately afterwards. EVERY student completed the homework that I assigned the first week (including the two delinquents who missed class).

My students respectfully refer to me as "Teacher." They say "Hello, Teacher," "Goodbye, Teacher," "Have a good weekend, Teacher," "Thank you, Teacher." They write me emails like the following one from John Nan (Nan Wei):

“I am John Nan. Weekend I was too busy to send a E-mail to you . Today's weather is too bad . Raindrops kiss the earth ,but it's not warm and hot kiss.In this water world ,everything feels a bit cold.

I searched the Web of your college--Columbia Basin College. She is very beautiful !

Oh ,it's time I must go to have English Writing Lesson.See you tomorrowa and I will finish my home work.

Wish you everything is OK."

There is something old fashioned and endearing about all of this, coming from the American education system where students are almost totally oblivious to any form of social deference. Many students in my college classes never even bother to learn my name. Some of them simply call me, "Arnold." They miss class. They come late and leave early. They don’t bother to do their homework and don’t feel the least bit apologetic about it.

And yet, is the deference that Chinese students display meaningful or simply part of their social training? In America, at least I know I can earn the respect of students and that such growing respect can be measured. Here, it is hard to know. If I was the absolute worst teacher they ever had, they would still sit in their seats respectfully and say "Thank you, Teacher."

Then there is Seymour (Liu Shao Peng) who, on the second day of class, said his hero is Osama Bin Laden. The class laughed--clearly he was making a joke. I was a little taken aback. In an American classroom I probably would have asked some follow-up questions to get him to defend his choice, but, with the low level of comprehension here, it was futile. I simply brushed off the comment and moved on. Later I received this email from him:

"Mr.David

I'm very sorry to say Ben Lardon is a hero in my heart. I think ,I'm not only hurt you ,but also hurt your country. I want to say you ,in my heart,my hero is Liu Xiang .He is the first Asian gained the step 110 metre railing's Gold- medal in 2004 Olympic Games .

At first , I want to make a joke to you .I hope that you won't angry with it. You know , I love the peace of the world . I love my country. And I like your country ,too . I hate that who destroy the country and peace .

I hope you can forgive me."

Despite the fact that the subject matter of my ESL classes is not intellectually stimulating, I’m still learning a lot about life and culture here in China (or at least I think I am).

For example, one exercise in my basic English textbook asks students to "match the words in columns A and B to make compound nouns."

Most of the words are connected to public transportation systems: column A contains the words bicycle, bus, parking, street, subway, taxi, traffic, and train. Column B contains the words garage, jam, lane, light, space, stand, station, stop, and system. The only exception to the "transportation" theme is that column A also contains the word "news," which can be successfully matched with "stand."

The most complicated concept in the exercise was explaining to my students the meaning of "system." Leaving out the full range of possible definitions, I told them that "system" in the sense it was being used here meant something that is "organized, coordinated, and planned." I wrote these words on the board and asked them which matches made sense. They could easily see that city buses, subways, and trains are organized, coordinated, and planned: we know where they will go every day; they have schedules, numbers, colors, and routes.

What was so fascinating to me was that EVERY one of my five classes also claimed that there was a "news system."

"But is the news planned?" I asked. "We know what the trains will do today," I explained, "but do we know what will happen in the news?" "Do we know if a plane will crash today?"

They nodded but did not seem to fully understand. Was this is language misunderstanding or a cultural misunderstanding? It is well known that during Mao's time, and even after, news outlets in China were required to report only "good" news. Even today, everyone knows that during the stifling heat of Chinese summers when the mercury often approaches 40 degrees, the temperature is always reported at 35 degrees because of a law that gives everyone the day-off if it is above 35. In a country where for so many years the news was (and still is) "planned," were my students simply stating the obvious? Likely, it was just a language thing, but I couldn't help noticing the irony.

So I’m learning a lot. And I’m in China. And teaching English is not my only job. Today Mrs. Wu Yunna called me about the teacher’s seminars that are now scheduled for Thursdays from 4:30 to 6:00pm. Originally, I was supposed to continue seminars on history and teaching methodology with the junior faculty from the International Exchange College. But now, the English Teachers from the Foreign Language Institute also want to be involved, so there will have a big group of intellectually curious faculty participating in these seminars for the entire semester. What we will talk about remains to be seen, but it should be very interesting.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

American History in Hohhot

These faculty members from the Foreign Language Institute were my first “students” at Inner Mongolia Normal University. They were uniformly polite and attentive. And very nice!

When my colleague Yongsheng Sun asked me if I’d be interested in participating in an exchange with his former university in China, where he had studied and taught in the 1980s, the prospect was exciting, but also daunting. What would I teach? I’m trained as a historian of American history, which is primarily what I teach at Columbia Basin College, along with classes in Native American, Pacific Northwest, and World History. Would students or faculty at Inner Mongolia Normal University be interested in any of those topics?

The answer is, well, a resounding “kind of.” The truth is that here at Inner Mongolia Normal University (called Shi Da, or Teacher’s University for short) ALL of the “foreign experts” from the United States teach English. Did they really want some American blowhard teaching American history? Were undergraduate students ready for an American history class taught entirely in English?

Administrators here—like university administrators everywhere--are very practical: their undergraduate students are not ready to take a college-level discipline-specific course in English. And yet, due primarily to the tireless efforts of Yongsheng, whose former classmates and colleagues now occupy positions of authority within the college administration, Shi Da decided to have me teach a series of seminars on American history to their junior faculty during their “short semester,” August 6 through September 7, with seminars also continuing throughout the long semester, from September to January.

But, as of August 6, when Yongsheng left Hohhot for the United States, I had no idea when I would be teaching these seminars, how many I would be teaching, and on what topics. In fact, I had no answers to these questions until my first day of class, August 10, when Mrs. Wu Yunna, the Vice Dean of Instruction, called me at 9:30am to schedule a meeting at 10:00am, at which time she told me I'd be teaching my first class to the Foreign Language faculty at 2:30pm that same day. To be fair, she apologized profusely for asking me to perform on such short notice.

The next question was: what would my topic be. Mrs. Wu Yunna wanted know exactly what I'd be speaking on, and I told her that the first day would be an introduction. But apparently Ms. Wu Haiyan, the Vice Dean of the Foreign Languages Institute, wanted something more specific. She came over and I met with her in Mrs. Wu Yunna's office. I told her that I'd like to introduce myself and ask the junior faculty what they were interested in learning. She suggested that, rather than asking them, that I discuss and provide a list of topics on American history from which they could choose topics of interest. So that was the plan.

By this time, I'd been in Mrs. Wu Yunna's office for close to two hours on a day that must have been in the mid 90s. With no air conditioning, I was beginning to wilt. The previous night (and days) had been really, really hot, and I was having a problem cooling off. Our south-facing fourth-floor flat was 90 degrees (no air conditioning or fans, although later we would get fans). I had woken up the night before soaked in sweat. I gave myself two sponge baths, but still couldn’t cool off. That day was even worse. After my meeting with Mrs. Wu Yunna and Ms. Wu Haiyan, I had only two hours to prepare my first class, but spent most of it taking cold showers and holding a frozen water bottle on my head in an effort to cool down. I took three iboprofen, and still felt like I was burning, although I didn't have a fever.

At 2:00pm I went to meet Mrs. Wu Yunna who walked me to my first class at Shi Da. When I walked in the classroom, there were about 25 students (instructors, actually) waiting for me. Mrs. Wu Yunna and Ms. Wu Haiyan, the Vice Deans, seated themselves in the front row. I was introduced by Ms. Nar, the chair of the department, and there I was, giving my first American history class at Inner Mongolia Normal University.

To tell the truth, it was the first time I'd felt truly comfortable since I'd been in China. Not only was the classroom cool and breezy, but it was a classroom--a familiar environment that I understood. The streets of Hohhot were still chaotic and unfamiliar, but this was well-known territory. A Chinese classroom looks the same as an American classroom, except perhaps in the degree of attentiveness that the students give the instructor.

I introduced myself and discussed my list of topics in American history. It took about forty-five minutes and then I asked if anyone had suggestions for what they would like to learn (drawn from the topics) and what we might cover in class the next week. No one spoke. Finally, the departmental chair, Ms. Nar, spoke up and suggested that we begin with Native Americans. “Good, are there any other suggestions,” I asked. After another long pause, another brave instructor suggested that she would like to learn about American Christianity, starting with the Puritans. I had my first two lecture topics: Native Americans and the origins of Christianity in America.

Over the next five weeks, I taught weekly “seminars” to junior faculty in the Foreign Language Institute and the International Exchange College. (I place quotes around “seminars” because, although they were supposed to be seminars, they were actually lectures: more on this below.) The faculty chose the topics: Native Americans, American Christianity, the Enlightenment, Transcendentalism, and American Foreign Policy.

Every “seminar” followed a similar trajectory. I lectured for about an hour and then we had a question and answer session where, sometimes, I elicited some discussion. In the first two weeks, though, there was often just applause followed by a respectful silence.

In "Encountering the Chinese," Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius Grove note that "Chinese students and trainees usually present themselves as an attentive, respectful, and, above all, passive audience. They arrive, they listen, they take copious notes, they depart. Even when invited to make comments or ask questions, they are reluctant to speak." Generally speaking, that describes my experience during the first few weeks of seminars. At Columbia Basin College, I feed off student comments, trying to establish common ground that can be used as a launching pad for further learning. These lectures, however, were purely unilateral. I was the "sage on the stage," as American educators pejoratively refer to this style of teaching, filling my students with wisdom as if they were empty receptacles waiting to be filled with my knowledge and wisdom.

Playing the “sage on the stage” is okay as long as you receive non-verbal cues from the audience that your points, your jokes, your ironies, are taking hold. All it takes sometimes is an extremely attentive student to let you know if your message is breaking through or bouncing off. In my classes with the foreign-language faculty, for instance, the British educated Vice Dean, Wu Haiyan sat in the front row and nodded and smiled. After the first weeks, her enthusiasm seemed to rub off on the other faculty members, who began to ply me with questions at the end of my lectures. Later Wu Haiyan would tell me in an email that she “had not expected that the teachers could be so active in the A & Q session, as most of our teachers are normally very quiet in such academic seminars. I think the reason why they were so engaged is because of your excellent presentation[s] and your rich knowledge on American history.”

Her compliment was well-received, but it didn’t assuage my concern that the seminars were not particularly useful or desirable. The junior faculty, I feared, were attending my lessons only because they were told to do so. I was receiving positive feedback all the time, but everyone is so polite here that I doubted they would really tell me how they felt (not really a problem when dealing with American faculty, who are so outspoken and egotistical you can’t get a word in edgewise).

In the end, the seminars were very nice. The teachers were kind, attentive, and, seemingly, very interested. I can’t say that I learned a lot myself—after all, I was teaching things I already knew, and when I asked questions of them, I never really received satisfying answers. For instance, after discussing the connections between Transcendentalism and the origins of the modern environmental movement (think Thoreau to John Muir to Edward Abbey), I asked if there was an environmental movement in China. No one knew.

But teaching these seminars was a great beginning to my short career here at Shi Da, and it certainly had its moments.

-- On the first day in all my seminars I asked everyone to come next time with written questions about American history. Out of fifty teachers, three actually did this.

--In my first lecture on Native Americans, Ms. Nar, who was operating the powerpoint for me, single-mindedly clicked through the slides at her own brisk pace, ensuring that my lecture was quite succinct. I finished what should have been an hour-long lecture in about forty-five minutes.

-- Before my only lecture to another group of English teachers from the new campus (who teach English to non-English majors), I ate a large plate of noodles from the small store behind our apartment and then had milk tea and mutton meat pie from a Mongolian restaurant up the street. At the beginning of my lecture, I began to feel dizzy. I started to have meat-pie hallucinations and milk tea burps. I thought I was going to faint. I had to stop a few times as they watched me with quiet concern. I told them about the milk-tea burps. They laughed, but laughs in Chinese classrooms sometimes conceal embarrassment. Was I funny or embarrassing? Not really sure. But I struggled through it and it went well in the end.

Now I’m teaching undergraduates English, which is an entirely new and different experience for me. But I’m also expecting to continue teaching seminars to faculty on either American history or teaching methods in America (their idea).

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.

Dave

Below I’ve listed some questions that the junior faculty asked me over the course of the American history seminars (I’ll spare you my answers!):

Q: Do traditional Native American names have given and sur names, and if so, do the sur names relate to the person’s clan or family?

Q: Are Mongolian peoples and Native Americans connected with each other genetically, linguistically, and culturally?

Q: The first Europeans benefited from Native American generosity: why then, did they subsequently support the massacre of Native peoples?

Q: Was the Assimilation Policy (Native Americans) really “Progress”?

Q: Why did Quakers and Puritans wear hats--what does it mean?

Q: Someone told me that 'You cannot understand American history and society without understanding the Puritans'--what do you think?"

Q: How are the Old and New Testaments connected?

Q: If Christianity was originally the religion of Jews, how could it happen that while the Jews were universally persecuted, their religious beliefs, like the Old Testament, were universally read and accepted?

Q: Do Americans actually read the bible?

Q: Is the younger generation of Americans still joining the Christian church?

Q: Why do American people always change their jobs? Is it not accepted to stay in one place all the time? Is there any job discrimination?

Q: What is a typical American hero?

Q: What do Americans think about the Vietnam War?

Q: Why haven't Americans learned from history?

These guys were on the other side of the room.

Community of the Streets

CAUTION: Please do not read the following post if romantic drivel about "community" makes you want to spew. (Rob Chisholm, I'll ask you to refrain from reading on.) Anyone who pines for simpler times (the Pleistocene, for example), please read on and enjoy.

The street beside our apartment comes alive in evening (as do all the streets in Hohhot). People come home from work to eat, drink, stroll, and shop along the crowded byways.

This "thought-piece" reflects a decidedly romantic view of community from a modern middle-class American who sometimes yearns for community (in the abstract), but who mostly enjoys the individual freedom that comes from being liberated from actual community. Real communities require mutual obligations and reciprocities; they entail, for better or worse, the curtailment of personal freedoms and privacies. And yet, as I stroll down the evening streets of Hohhot, all around me I see the web of real human communities at their most picturesque--families gathered on the street corners and steps of apartments; kids riding bikes; men playing mahjong, cards, and pool (on pool tables mounted on carts that have been pulled upon the sidewalks); women talking and strolling; girls arm in arm. There is noise and laughter. People sit on stools eating noodles, vendors with carts sell plums and melons, a petty restaurateur cooks kabobs on a barrel, a man sits on the curb with a bottle of "Snowdeer" beer and reads a book. Everyone seems happy and relaxed. It is a warm early autumn evening in Inner Mongolia. The evening sky is blue and streaked with clouds. The city seems alive in a way that is missing in suburban American--or even our greatest cities, which, depending on what part of town you're in, are either depressed or gussied up to cater to the urban upper class.

Perhaps this sense of "community" that I think I'm observing is merely an expression of poverty: where there are donkey-carts and street vendors, tourists may confuse primitive capitalism for community. Perhaps this "vibrancy" will disappear as increasing wealth transforms peasants into middle-class people, with greater desires for individual freedoms and private pleasures. In Hohhot, people are already retreating from the streets to gated luxury apartments. But this street that I'm walking down is not just a community of poverty, where people inhabit the streets because they have nowhere else to go. These are college students and ordinary middle-class people from the adjacent apartment complexes enjoying an evening on the streets. Yes, there are poor Mongolian peasants selling their wares, but there is also something here that is missing in modern America: people gathering in common places, enjoying each other and participating in the collective joy of eating, drinking, playing, and simply being alive on a warm evening. I wonder how "the Chinese" ever acquired the stereotype of being placid, cold, and inscrutable. There is nothing like that here.

By the way, I’m teaching undergraduates as of this week (instead of junior faculty). More on that later.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

The Inner Mongolia Safari Park

From left to right: Karen, Emi, Grace, Karen, Linnet, Samuel, Delai, Kenneth. Walking down the hill towards the gate of the “Inner Mongolia Safari Park,” with Hohhot lying on the plain below and the mountains rising up behind us. The Park is located in a beautiful setting, nestled in the foothills of the mountains that surround Hohhot.

Two days ago, we went to the zoo in Hohhot, or rather the “Inner Mongolia Safari Park.” Arienne was sick at home, so Samuel, Grace and I went with Karen, Karen, Linnet, Kenneth, Delai, and Emmy on bikes to the zoo, which is on the northwestern edge of the city just where the mountains begin. The trip was six miles each way, and before we even got out of the city, Samuel was having diarrhea. We had to find a hotel lobby. He was complaining of the shakes and cramps, and since Arienne had been sick, and we've all been a little under the weather and beaten down since returning from Beijing, I was fearing the worst. He had that sunken and glazed-over look in his eyes. But he insisted on pushing forward to the zoo and I let him. Riding through Hohhot, of course, is absolute pandemonium--the craziest traffic in China, or so we’ve heard. And to allow your eight-year old son, with diarrhea and sunken eyes, to navigate this traffic on his own is the height of parental irresponsibility. But we went on. If Mom had been there, we would have locked up his bike and rode back in the taxi at the first diarrhea stop.

Trams: The only way to properly observe wildlife.

We made it to the zoo by 11am. We had left our apartment at 9:15am, so it was quite a trek. We locked up our bikes and jumped on a tram, which took us to a bus. Like other tourist attractions I’ve seen here, everything is done on a remarkably grand scale. But like most grand affairs in Hohhot, there is also a creeping sense of disrepair, as if this new and impressive facility was not quite being maintained properly. The ponds were a little too green, the animals a little too thin and shaggy. Raggedly lions rested on the cement beside their enclosure, taking refuge in thin patches of shade. Deer and other "grassland" creatures panted on an overheated plain of dirt and rock, not a blade of grass in sight. Chickens here and there lay dead in the bird facility. Rabbits peered through wire fences, their ears clipped. The kids didn't seem to notice or mind (except for the clipped rabbit ears), but this zoo, despite its grand layout and physical beauty, would be closed down in the U.S. after the first wave of public outrage and PETA protests. To be fair, it is a facility much like zoos used to be in the United States before cages were jettisoned for “habitats.” In fact, the kids had a great time, despite the heat, their exhaustion, and the fact that the bus never even slowed down as we zoomed by the cages of prized megafauna like lions, tigers, and bears (oh my).

Grassland animals in their native environment, minus the grass.

When the bus dropped us off after the megafauna tour, we were left to walk a mile or more back to the main gate, the trail winding through various depressing animal enclosures and ending at the elephant, who stood chained to his small iron-barred home, desperately showering himself in sand to ward off the heat and bugs (Am I being overly dramatic here? It's the muckraker in me). This mile-long walk was also punctuated by Samuel making continuous trips to the WC and the bushes, where I lent a hand with balance and wet ones.

The elephant, with his left front foot chained to his cage, and Samuel, between bouts of diarrhea.

By the time we made it back to the gate, it was 1:30pm. The kids had not eaten, it was hot, Samuel was dehydrated, Grace was refusing food, and I was thinking I'd have to take them home by taxi and come back for the bikes later. Instead, we put Grace on the back of Karen's bike, Samuel on the back of my bike, and Delai pulled Samuel's bike alongside with remarkable skill. And, in fact, Samuel perked up after a couple miles and rode the rest of the way home. But not before we stopped at KFC. Thank goodness for American fast food: even ailing kids will gladly stuff themselves with thousands of empty calories. In truth, our kids have NEVER eaten at KFC before they came to Hohhot (and they still haven’t eaten at McDonalds, but I’m afraid the time is drawing near). Frankly, I was too wiped out to care. They were eating. We would make it home.

And we did finally make it, weaving our way through the streets of Hohhot back to our apartment, as if it was a completely ordinary affair, which, in some senses, it was. We've become accustomed to an environment that seemed wildly exotic just a few weeks ago. I rarely pulled my camera out, even as we rode through the photogenic Muslim quarter, where crevice-faced old women in head scarves limped across the boulevard and tiny crowded alley-ways angled off in every direction beneath gilded onion-domes.

The kids showed incredible endurance and, despite their continued homesickness (especially Samuel), I think they are having a rich experience here, even if it includes a bunch of soda pop and American fast food--ironically, things they NEVER get at home. More on family matters later.

Oh yeah, I’m bound also to write a post on teaching soon. The “short semester” is over and Monday I begin teaching undergraduates.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

Tourists in Beijing

Gracie and Dad (me) at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Arienne used this picture in her blog, but I couldn’t resist using it as well.

My postings have been few and far between for a number of reasons. I know, Grandma, you don’t care, but here are my excuses (is anyone beyond my grandma really reading this?):

--After I last posted, I taught my Thursday class and then we went to Beijing (last weekend).

--Upon arriving home, Arienne fell ill with a fever and bad stomach cramps, Samuel and Grace contracted a head cold (one I gave them), and I was asked to teach an extra seminar for faculty at the new campus (oh yes, I am teaching here in China, although not blogging about it yet!). In other words, for the past week we’ve been in survival mode.

We are just coming up for breath from our travels to Beijing and to the bathroom, so here is my first installment in the post “trip to Beijing” era, with many more to come. Having now seen all of TWO cities in this “vast and complicated country” (quoted from over two thousand different sources that have characterized China thusly), we have gained a much deeper understanding of our temporary home. Keep reading subsequent entries, because I’m planning on unleashing my accumulated knowledge VERY SOON.

In the meantime, here are some notes on our Beijing trip transcribed from my journal:

September 03: Beijing:

We've been here three days and it could not be MORE different from Hohhot. Everyone, it seems, speaks English, especially in the tourist parts of town. The city is teaming with waigoren, travelers and tourists alike. We are among the latter group, making no pretensions about seeing the "authentic" China from our four-star hotel in the central city, just blocks from the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and Beijing's high-end shopping street, Wangfujing Dajie. Our hotel is filled with French and other Europeans on tours, giving Arienne ample opportunity to speak French. Our waiter at dinner the first night was French and Arienne told me later that his family has been living in China for decades and he doesn't know one word of Chinese. Coming from Hohhot, I dare say that touristy Beijing hardly feels like "China" to us (and I use quotes because we have not yet seen much of China)--no donkey-carts, street-side vendors, or chaotic traffic. On the second day we rented bikes and rode through the hutongs and boulevards of the central city, none of us wearing helmets, and the traffic was an absolute breeze compared to Hohhot. People actually YIELDED to pedestrians and bicyclists as they made right-hand turns!

The final stage of the Tour de France. Wrong turn takes us into the hutongs of Beijing.

The orderly traffic reflected what is happening throughout Beijing: the city is being sterilized in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. The unwieldly hutongs and chaotic alleyways are being gentrified or destroyed to make way for large, antiseptic apartment complexes. While Hohhot and Beijing could not be more different, they share one dominant characteristic: they are both cities under construction. Everywhere the old is giving way to the new. In his book, "Planet of Slums," Mike Davis estimates that over three million poor people have been dislocated from central Beijing as China seeks to present to the world a clean, orderly, and modern city. I don't know if his numbers are correct, but it's not hard to imagine as you ride through the city and watch entire neighborhoods being torn down and colossal new structures springing up everywhere.

Traditional hutongs like this one are giving way to modern apartment complexes.

Everywhere Beijing is putting on its best face in preparation for the Olympic Games. Here the banner trumpets “Civilized Business for the Humanistic Olympics.” (I scribbled down the first word but can’t find it now. Anyone?)

Beijing is under construction, most of it shrouded in green tarping, as in the view below:

From a tourist perspective, however, Beijing could not have been nicer. The hutongs were cute and teaming with good food and souvenirs. The Forbidden City was forbidding and awe-inspiring. The Great Wall was great! (Although our kids were more interested in the toboggan ride back down from the wall than the wall itself.) The air was better than I expected. The parks were beautiful. So, despite tired and whiny kids, high prices, and snooty tourists (ourselves not included, of course), Beijing was wonderful. We plan to go back and as soon as we save up the money.

Child Abuse: Forced march up the Great Wall of China. From left: Arienne, Grace, and Samuel (gasping for air).