teeth.

I recently conducted one of the best lessons of my entire TEFL career. Although I am unsure of the learning benefits it truly provided, the students and I have been having the time of our lives in the classroom. The lesson is about comic strips. The students learn new words like "comic strip," "dialogue", "caption", and "audience", and then create their own cartoon. After they are finished creating their cartoon, they must explain it to the class. Although some students struggle with the creative component of this lesson, most embrace the opportunity and create ingenious stories. I have kept all of the cartoons as personal souvenirs. Here is one of my favorites:

oh china.

I have not written on my blog for approximately a week. China's internet restrictions are simply befuddling. Some weeks I can access my blog, other weeks I cannot. If I cease writing for a prolonged period of time, China is usually to blame.

The past week has been pretty difficult for me. Most mornings I awoke to uneasy and unhappy feelings: I don't want to teach. I don't want to ride buses. I don't want to wile away time in my office. I don't want to sit with teachers in the cafeteria. I don't want to plan lessons. I don't want to play badminton or ping-pong. I don't want to read. et cetera. et cetera.

The worst part....I can't explain the reasoning behind these feelings. I can't explain why I have felt so low and sad. I can't explain why I have felt angry and bitter. I can't explain my recent distaste for my job.

Perhaps I'm simply circling through one of the stages of culture shock...however, it's a lame excuse considering I have lived in China for seven blissful months.

One of my students noticed my lack of effervescence in class one day. He asked me if I was tired or sad. I decided to hide my unexplained feelings behind the weather forecast; I told him cloudy days made me sad...the sun helps me smile. And his reply:

"You are sad because you believe in God. When it is sunny you can feel God's presence...see him in the sky. But when it is raining, it is hard to see him.....hard to feel him. This is why you are sad."

Oh China, in all the ways you astound me with absurd antics, you still manage to floor me in the most eccentric, prolific, and astute ways.

The sun is shining today...and I feel good. I feel happy.

Extraordinary insight exists in uncommon places.

running.

"A man may live a hundred years,

And yet how short a span"*

*From Sikong Tu's "The Light-Hearted Mode"

regrets.

Every Tuesday Gary and I conduct a lesson for the English teachers at our school. Our lessons vary from linguistics to current events. Last week we started a literature lesson. We gave each pair of teachers a “Tuesday lesson” from Tuesdays with Morrie. We discussed each lesson.....its moral foundation, its applicability to our lives, its depth and its shallow aspects. And of course we discussed the inevitable: if you could teach your child or student one lesson what would it be?

The beauty of teaching is learning. And so—on Tuesday—I learned the lesson my heart has needed for so long.

After one of the younger teachers had presented her “lesson”, she told everyone what she wished to teach her daughter one day: “regret is a natural feeling”. Everyone experiences it. Everyone battles it. Everyone deals with it in his/her own way.

As she stated this, I felt calm. I felt understood.

For so long I have regretted the the unloving relationship I had with my sister. I regretted my actions...my words...my hatred. I regretted who I allowed myself to be when she was still at home. I loathed what I had done and what I had not done. I allowed regret to give way to hatred and condemnation of myself.

After years of battling these emotions, I suddenly—during the Tuesday teacher's lesson—felt relieved. I didn't feel closure or forgiveness, but I felt like I could acknowledge this terrible, consuming “natural feeling”.

When you regret “you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”[1] But we must recognize that while regret helps us wallow in the past, life grants us the future. It's important to deal with our emotions—to struggle, fight, acknowledge, and suppress—but it is equally important to focus on forgiveness so that we may not deny ourselves happiness.

Regret is possessive. However, we must learn how and when to let go.

---

[1] A quotation from For One More Day by Mitch Albom

the human element.

I was recently browsing through some of my teaching pictures when I suddenly felt enlightened.

For the past five years, when asked why I chose the teaching profession, I always fumbled and mumbled through trite diatribe: "It's my vocation." "I love literature." "I feel like I can make a difference." et cetera. et cetera.

However, it's none of these things that really motivates me. Let's be honest:

1) A plethora of professions could be defined as a vocation. And most people--who know me well--understand my desires change from week to week. I'm a rather fleeting character....probably too round for a novel.

2) A love for literature is not definitive of a passion for teaching. A love for literature simply means you like to read and dissect language, syntax, and literary elements.

3) I would probably make a bigger difference if I made a trillion dollars and donated it to stem cell research.

The thing that drives me to the teaching profession is the human element.

I love interacting on a personal level with developing characters. I love intense conversations where shallow and vague ideas find depth. I love giving young people just enough information to allow them to reason and come to their own conclusions (whether they be right or wrong). I love allowing disappointment to drive me to satisfaction. I love intellectual osmosis. I love the dramatic in spoken and written language. I love when my smile is returned. I love helping people fall in love with Shakespeare, Austen, Steinbeck, or any other brilliant literati, and I love when they receive something from this new-found delight. I love the entire spectrum of emotions. I love hugs. I love giving high-fives. I love feeling young because of the young.

I love feeling....this is the human element.

People may believe my feelings and choices are motivated by an immature love of one who has not lived long enough to recognize these as surreal emotions that will easily be replaced by the brutalities of reality. Perhaps they are right. But, "since feeling is first/ who pays any attention/ to the syntax of things*?"

*A line from e.e. cummings' poem, "since feeling is first"

indoctrinating the masses.

The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness.

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish the illusion of individuality, but in fact they have been to a great extent de-individualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too... Man is not made to be an automation, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed.

A Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley*

Most agree that education should embolden our students to accomplish great things...inspire them to become better people...teach them to think for themselves. After all, is this not the purpose of the brain: to attain and apply knowledge through proper self-reasoning and self-contemplation? If you teach a child new words, but he does not have the ability to properly use them in conversation, what is the purpose of this knowledge?

I have always been under the assumption that knowledge is the first step to practical application. Without knowledge, we cannot develop new ideas.

However, let's apply an Huxleian twist to the traditional notion of the purpose of knowledge. What if education was designed as a form of indoctrination. The teacher states the facts, the student regurgitates the facts. What good could come from this situation? Could we function as a society? Could progress occur?

This may seem an odd concept to pose; however, it is not. It's actually quite common in China. From the moment a child enters the classroom at age 6 until his last year as a senior III student, he endures lectures that require him to acquire facts and exams that assess his ability to regurgitate this "knowledge". I am aware of this troubling situation because I swim in its filth everyday. (See Gary's post for more information concerning the plight of China's education system)

Although my students are very bright (they can tell me all about the American government, recite complicated chemistry equations, and read English classics), very few have ever developed the ability to apply their knowledge. For example, if I ask my students about their opinion on a subject, I will receive blank stares coupled with a deafening silence, or the infamous reply "I don't know", or responses that mimic stock phrases found in oral English books. Another example? I cannot simply give oral directions in class. Every direction must be showcased. If I want a student to stand, I must tap his shoulder and provide hand motions. If I want students to act out a scenario, I must provide an example. If I want students to write something down, I must show them a pencil and paper and physically write on the paper myself. It's not a matter of not understanding a foreign language. It's an inability to do or think for themselves. The students were never trained to think...they were trained to regurgitate.

It's an indoctrination of the masses.

The purpose of this post is not to release personal frustration and disappointment. Rather, I prefer to address the larger social and economic problem.

I was recently reading an article from the McKinsey Quarterly titled, "Doing Business in China: A McKinsey Survery of executives in Asia".** I was interested in the article because of its four main topics: the China market, China as a competitor, threats to growth, and assessing and addressing the threats.

As I came to the end of the article, I was surprised by the survey's final poll on "attracting more investments":

When asked where China should invest to make itself a more attractive destination for corporations, executives do not focus their priorities solely on the biggest threats to the country’s growth. Investments in infrastructure and logistics top executives’ wish lists, regardless of sector or company size; 72 percent of executives make this category their first, second, or third priority (Exhibit 6). Education is close behind (70%). Despite the deep concern about income inequality, investments in health care, social security, and rural development are the lowest priorities, even among respondents in China.

China's economic developmental problems revert to its most basic social issue: formal education. If knowledge lacks basic application, it cannot be used for anything. Thus, logistics--the planning, implementation, and coordination of the details of a business or other operation (dictionary.com)--cannot develop. Nor can infrastructure--the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization (dictionary.com)--ever occur. Without these two essential elements, a business cannot survive--much less thrive.

Unfortunately, China produces masses of intelligent--but useless--people. If you doubt my assessment of the situation, I encourage you to seek the opinions of those who have first hand experience, such as my father or his friends. Teaching their employees to think for themselves has been the biggest challenge, disappointment, and overall failure they have endured for years.

Albert Einstein once said, "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education". In China, I believe it is a miracle that any curiosity exists at all.

*In 1958, Aldous Huxley wrote 12 essays that revisited the concepts and topics he addressed in his novel, A Brave New World. This is an excerpt from one of the essays.

**"The McKinsey Quarterly conducted the online survey in January 2007 and received 253 responses from C-level executives in Asia."

two grotesque absurdities.

I started thinking last night about two things I really detest:

1) The Reality TV show Survivor
2) Eating Contests

Let's begin with the first grotesque American absurdity. Here is a show that hires intelligent adults to betray all human decency and battle "the elements" using perverted animalisitic techniques. The show thrives off dramatic elements inspired by dishonest, cruel, backstabbing, spiteful, tyrannical, vicious behavior. And the catch? You can earn a whole million dollars. That's special--encouraging the cultured to become boorish for mere financial gain. The show reeks of crude Romanesque qualities: throwing the gladiators into the pit so we can watch the mutilation from the comfort of our couches.

And the challenges? Don't even bother commenting on my blog about this. They are an idiotic waste. A challenge is finding the cure for cancer. Climbing on poles, swimming in the sea, and eating bugs is not a challenge--it is inanity.

Number two: Food eating contests. How--when so many people are starving--do we condone such grotesque gluttony for fun? It is sick. I will never participate in or excuse such vulgar things.

I don't really care if this entry sounds condescending or judgemental. It is my opinion that we play in our politically-correct play-pens far too often. If we don't judge and change the bad aspects of our culture, it will disintegrate.

"reading is....

a discount ticket to everywhere." --Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune columnist

Gary and I enjoy a weekly online newsletter called ZGBriefs. This newsletter--a condensation of many published sources--provides articles concerning China's government, politics, foreign affairs, religion, health, education, society, environment, business, etc.

If you enjoy reading and are especially interested in China--or the effect China has/is having/will have on the rest of the world--I highly encourage you to sign up for this free and enlightening newsletter:

www.zgbriefs.com

Moreover, if anyone would like to discuss anything related to China, please feel free to send me an email or comment on my blog. I am happy to discuss/debate anything related to China or literature (since those are my two current life-interests).

Happy reading!

saxophone wang.

I was browsing through an assignment my students completed last week. As I flipped through the mass of papers, I couldn't help enjoying this one:

nomadic youth.

Sitting on the edge of a cliff in Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan Province

"Last night I made a list (for myself) of the seven cardinal virtues of a traveller:

1. To admit standards that are not one's own standards and discriminate the values that are not one's own values
2.To know how to use stupid men and inadequate tools with equanimity.
3. To be able to dissociate oneself from one's bodily sensations.
4. To be able to take rest and nourishment as and when they come.
5. To love not only nature but human nature also.
6. To have an unpreoccupied, observant, and uncensorious mind--in other words, to be unselfish.
7. To be as calmly good-tempered at the end of the day as at the beginning.

I should like to see Gertrude try to conform to one of them!"

--A letter Freya Stark wrote to her mother, January 12, 1938