Aug. 21, 2019
Where to start? Maybe I can start with the fact that my father is dead. I’m a little ashamed about my lack of sadness about this, and about how little I miss him. He was a good man in many respects. I don’t know how proper it is of me to judge him as a father. Maybe his sons are the only ones who can judge him that way; or maybe we are the only ones who should not. As for me, suffice it to say that he had good intentions, and that’s hard to hold against him. My brothers might argue that I got the best father out of him of the three of us. I think I would agree with them. But then knowing that I would agree with them, they would then argue with me. That’s how we work.
I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t be doing this if he were still alive. I’m still on the plane as I write this first entry. I’ll be in Shanghai in about 10 hours, where I’ll have to switch airports before boarding a train to Ningbo - the city where I’ll be teaching math starting about two weeks from now.
I’ve talked about embarking on this journey for years. Why did I stay in the city for all of six years? Maybe San Francisco remained too interesting a place for me to leave it so soon. Yet now I leave it quite happily. It occurs to me that I might have stayed in San Francisco as long as I did out of some sort of loyalty to my father. I didn’t want to disappoint him - again. The other factor that comes to mind is that the two women whose company I enjoyed have long since left me for better people and places. They kept life interesting for me. Now San Francisco strikes me as drab and stagnant, so I will fly away too.
I wonder if I will appreciate the city more with time spent far away. It has clean air, nice places to walk, run and bike, bookstores, theaters, restaurants for people with too much money, and corner markets for the rest of us. One of its cultural highlights is its status as the national headquarters of the LGBTQ community. The Castro district is a national icon. This status definitely leaves its mark on the culture of the Bay area. On the other hand, one feature by which San Francisco does not stand out is its income inequality. There’s too much money in San Francisco and, perhaps as a natural consequence, there are very many people there in dire need of it. Property owners see homeless people as a scourge to their precious bank accounts. This is a perspective of the so-called “Homeless problem,” which is a hot topic in San Francisco. I think this perspective is the biggest problem. When you see a homeless person in your too-rich neighborhood, a knee-jerk reaction is to call the police. There are parts of the world where the reaction would be to offer the person something to eat. For some reason people don’t think this way in San Francisco. I think it’s more of an American trait, for this sort of animosity is not, should not be, the San Franciscan way.
I’m interested in politics, and am fervently anti-patriotic when it comes to American foreign policy. The last words my disagreeable brother told me were that I should ask the Chinese what they think of the massacre at tiananmen square in 1989. I don’t know why he thinks it would be a good idea to bring up this stain of recent history to my new hosts. I told him I won’t ask such rude questions. Always seeking to correct others, my brother noted that it is not rude to ask, but dangerous. He may be right, though I think that the local authorities - the perceived danger here - would be the ones to save me from getting my teeth knocked out after my random sampling of Chinese opinion on the tiananmen massacre. I wonder if the same could be said if a Chinese person were to go to central Virginia and ask the locals their opinion on the countless number of Iraqi civilian deaths during the War on Terror. (Actually people have tried to count this figure at https://www.thoughtco.com/iraq-casualties-saddam-hussein-george-bush-2353716 ). A little moral support from this brother would have been appreciated. What could you say to a little brother you embarks on a potentially wonderful experience in another country? How about “Have a nice trip” or “Good luck in China”? Just a thought.
In any case, for the record, I am already very much against American foreign policy, even before moving to China. It’s possible that another life abroad will help me break away even further from my native land. Or maybe I will gain some self-respect when it comes to my nationality. We’ll see.
My other brother is less unsupportive. He seems more indifferent than anything else, or maybe he knows better to counter this move of mine, as he is well aware that such action would really piss me off. He took Dad’s side years ago in a splendid bout of hypocrisy when he asked “What if you go and don’t come back for several years?” This was from the brother in his third year living in Bari, Italy, hosting me on a visit. He was Dad’s loudspeaker. I don’t know why. He admitted to this later, which I appreciate, but that still doesn’t explain his attempt to take such a position.
There was no doubt that Dad didn’t want me to leave. He told me so. ‘I am allowed to have an opinion about the actions you take,’ he said, and he’s right. He went on to say that it was my life and that I could take charge of it as I please. But his seeds had been sown. Maybe he was hoping that I would stay near him out of loyalty. In the last months of his life, as his demise became more and more apparent, he probably had mixed feelings about my presence. Like any other animal I’ve seen suffer from old age, he might have preferred to be entirely alone. He didn’t like being escorted to the threshold as his hour came ever closer.
Aug 22, 2019.
In between short naps, I spent the flight yesterday playing chess against the computer screen in front of me. I also played solitaire and discovered this challenging game might have some strategy to it. The flight went by faster than I expected. I wouldn’t have minded a longer one. I’d have watched a movie or two.
I was a man on a mission inside one of the Shanghai airports. I knew that my connecting transit to Ningbo was out of another airport. I was also relatively certain that this transit was a train ride and not a flight, even though my itinerary said ‘flight 6111’. I was also hopeful that getting to the other airport would be a routine procedure that thousands of people do every day.
Going through customs was relatively easy. Entering the country there are lines for people with Chinese passports, and another line labelled ‘foreigners.’ (Side note: historically the Chinese have used a term for foreign people which translates to “barbarians.” I couldn’t read the Chinese characters labelling the ‘foreigner’ sign at the airport, but I wonder if it’s the same characters as used previously. I recall reading that one of the demands made by the British on the Qing dynasty after the first of the Opium wars in the 19th century was that the Chinese stop calling the British ‘barbarians.’ I suppose the Qing gave in to the British demands here, as on all other points. The import of opium was made possible again, and merchants of all barbarian backgrounds, including many Americans, got rich off of this nefarious trade. To be fair, many Chinese middle-men got rich off the illicit sale of Opium too. End side note.) The line for foreigners turned out to be much shorter than the one for native Chinese. The officer at the counter took my passport and my card of entry that I had filled out on the airplane, asked me (in English) to provide a more detailed destination, like the name of the school I would be working at. I wrote UNNCAHS. She asked if I could be more specific. On the fly I wrote University of Nottingham, Ningbo China, Affiliated High School. She was happy with that. My fingerprints were recorded, as are any barbarian’s who enters China, and I went by. Picking up luggage and going through customs were the standard procedure. It was faster than anywhere else I had been, despite the crowds.
Then I was on the non-secure side of the airport. I had left a print out of my itinerary in my mom’s car that morning as we parted at the El Cerrito BART station. Fortunately, mom and I had previously established email contact through a Russian email provider which I suspected, correctly, the Chinese government does not censure as they do services provided by Google, like gmail. Mom sent me a picture of the itinerary which I received through the plane’s local wifi while we were still flying. Technology was there for me when I needed it. But since I had my phone at home (purposely), you could find me yesterday at the PVG Shanghai airport, going from one info desk to another with my macbook out, showing the picture of this crumbled-up itinerary. One member of personnel showed me to the Eastern China airlines desk. This was the company I had flown to Shanghai with, and who hopefully had a connecting ticket for me. The line was short. Two personnel looked at the picture, scratching their heads.
“But it says ‘flight’,” they said.
“Yes, I know, but I was told that it was a train ride.”
They looked further. The ‘flight’ number, 6111, was not showing up in their online searches.
I argued that a flight would not take the two hours that were scheduled on the itinerary. A flight would take less than an hour. I don’t know if they understood my arguments as I presented them in English, but after a few phone calls they got back to me.
“It’s train ride!” They said.
“Where is the other airport? How do I get there?” I asked.
“Hong Qiao train station. You can take taxi. You can take metro.”
“A taxi is expensive. How long does metro take?” I asked.
“You know no Chinese, metro might take too long.”
They were right that I knew very little Chinese. I had studied Mandarin for years, but the serious study really only starts with your arrival in the country. I was on day 1. The airline had generously scheduled a four and a half layover for the passenger to make it to the connecting train. I had burned about one hour before making it to this desk. One of the personnel gave me more info, to the effect that I could fly to Ningbo directly from that airport that very evening for some 1000 yuan (the most recent exchange rate I saw had 1 American dollar = 7.04 Chinese yuan, so seven hundred yuan was about one hundred dollars). After they confirmed that the metro ride to the other airport, over 30 miles away, would take not two hours, I declared that I would like to try the metro route. They kindly wrote down Hong Qiao train station both in latin and in Chinese characters, and I was on my way.
Signs at the airport indicating the route to the metro were clear. I got in a long but fast line through metro security, equipped with an xray device for all luggage, and a metal detector, like at an airport. While in the middle of the line, I noticed people going through tourniquets by scanning a card, much like they do for BART in San Francisco, or the Moscow metro, or probably just about any metro service anywhere. Where did those cards come from? Fortunately I don’t have to explain to anyone that I’m a dumb westerner who knows nothing about how to live in this country - they already know. Resorting more or less to sign language I indicated to one security personnel that I had no metro card. They pointed me in the direction of the ticket machines which I should have visited before joining the line. These machines were hiding in a corner that my observations skills had neglected to notice. Even with the English option, selecting my destination on the touch screen was like solving one of those word-search games from elementary school, where you’re given a slew of seemingly random letters on a 10x10 square grid in which are hiding particular words to find. I was always good at these, though it took me a few minutes to even scroll to the correct screen that contained the Hong Qiao airport - such are the dimensions of this huge city, Shanghai.
I was right in a sense, that getting to this other airport was relatively simple. It took a little over an hour and a half on a single line of the Shanghai metro. It was not as crowded as one might expect in China, no more crowded than San Francisco’s BART at rush hour, far less crowded than I remember in Moscow at most hours. I got out at the Hong Qiao train station, along with many others, and followed a crowd to what I hoped might be some ticket counters, but the station was bigger than I had hoped. It was around 7:49 p.m. My itinerary indicated that my train left at 8:35. Tick-tock, went the large clock in my head.
I found an information counter, but I knew somehow that English would be of less use here. Westerners can be pretty dumb, but surely none of them are that dumb as to try a cross-city connection via train without knowing the ropes first. For this reason, the highest level of English-speaking personnel are located at the places where you have the highest concentration of foreign barbarians, like airports. This information counter was not one of those places. This was an opportunity for my Jiu4 Jin1 Shan1 Madarin Chinese skills. What I could have said might have gone something like this (I don’t know if this is correct), “到 寧波 怎 麼 去？”, or with ‘simplified’ characters “到宁波怎么去”. Both expressions sound something like this: “dao4 ning2 bo1 zen3 me qu4 ?” (By the way, numbers on the so-called PinYin latinization of Chinese characters indicate the tone of the word. 1 is level high, 2 is rising low to high, 3 is a sort of low croaking tone, 4 is falling from high to low; absence of a number indicates a neutral tone). This translates roughly to “to Ningbo how go?” That’s what I could have tried to say, but as I made clear eye contact with the woman at the desk all that came out was “Ning bo?” She replied in rapid fire “dadadadadadada Ningbo dadadada 2 F,” and she pointed towards this large sign with a ‘2 F’ hanging from the ceiling. I said in English “Eastern China airways?” but already this was too much. She just shook her head and pointed at the sign for ‘2 F’. Throngs of people were following the signs for 2F, which now I could see had English writing on the bottom reading something like ‘distance trains.’ I followed the 2F up until the crowds started going through another tourniquet using another card which I did not have (I had already used the metro card to exit the metro). Where did they get this card? Surely there must be a ticket office or another ticket machine somewhere? I went in circles for a few precious minutes before returning to these tourniquets to try to observe things more closely. A member of security personnel saw me there studying the situation. I don’t recall either of us could exchange words that the other would understand, but with a gesture he communicated that perhaps I should try that line over there. People had their passports out for ID going through this line. I didn’t imagine that my passport would be enough to get me through too, but sure enough they just used it as photo ID and I was let pass. Another security check-point, and I was in the part of the train station I think I needed to be. It was 8:08.
Another round of a visit to the info desk, and the laptop picture of itinerary.
“But it says ‘flight’!” They tell me from behind the counter.
“I know, I know, but…”
Another phone call, and aha!
“Go over there, around the corner to counter 89.” They say.
There were 5 people in front of me at counter 89. It was 8:14. Something we can note from all this experience was that though lines are many and may be long, they seem to go fast. This one was almost an exception to that rule, short as it was while averaging a little over one minute per person. When I got there I gave the guy my passport. I think he had just spoken on the phone with the info desk, for he had my ticket right there, ready to go with my name on it. Except for some reason my passport number on the ticket had been recorded incorrectly. My name was there, but the number on the ticket didn’t match the number in my passport. The guy asked me in English why the numbers didn’t match, if perhaps I had changed my passport recently. I shrugged my shoulders, said I had not, that I didn’t know why the mismatch had occurred. Had this been Germany, I definitely would not have received the ticket. I might also have been fined, and if they were available, maybe security would pull me aside for questioning. But this Chinese gentleman just shrugged his shoulders too, and passed me my ticket with passport, while indicating the gate I was to go to. I found it surprising that Eastern China Air had indeed arranged for my train ticket, and even more miraculous that I had managed to receive it, and was on my way to the gate. I met a crowd of people going through the tourniquet to the platform, and found the train that would take me to Ningbo. Of the four and a half hours allotted to make the transfer from plane to train, I had made the trip with just under 5 minutes to spare.
In a bit of a rush, I entered the car which appeared to have lots of space in it, car number 13, very very carefully lifted my luggage onto the railing above the seats, and took an available seat. The reason I wanted to be especially careful with lifting my luggage lies in this groin injury I suffered now several months ago. This injury is particularly easy to aggravate, so it is taking a very long time to heal. I realized the day before my trip that I would’ve done well to see a doctor about this injury, for who knows how close I am to a full-blown hernia which may require surgical intervention along with some rehab? The day prior to leaving as I was packing my bags I repeatedly stood on and off a scale, first with, then without my bags, lifting them off the floor not even a few inches just to get an idea of how much they weigh. After this very minor activity my groin was burning like it hadn’t done for a long time. What had I done to deserve this? Was I going to make it through the trials of 24 hours of travel without losing the capacity to walk? What a way to meet my boss in person - from a hospital bed. So I had made it to the train to Ningbo where I faced this 6-foot-high railing where I was to put my luggage - two bags, one 20 lbs, the other 40. Swallowing my common sense while exhibiting an arrogant bout of masculinity, I performed the lift without a hitch. I felt not even a twinge of pain while doing it. Nor did I get a burning sensation later on. Very strange how the body works - and doesn’t - sometimes.
Not a few seconds had passed after I sat down before someone came up and indicated to me I’ve taken their seat. How do you know, I asked in English, not caring at this point if I’m understood. He showed me a few numbers on his ticket. I looked at the corresponding numbers on my ticket to discover I had a seat in car 5, eight cars downstream on the train. I rushed to my train-car, leaving my luggage in car 13 because there was plenty of space there, which was not guaranteed where I was going. I took my seat. The train departed Shanghai.
Close to halfway through this trip, with my luggage safely eight cars away near a large city called Hangzhou something occurred to my slow American mind regarding the way trains work: sometimes they split up. By that point we had already had several stops. Was car 13 still part of the train? At the short stop in Hangzhou I got out onto a mostly empty platform, flagged down one of the train personnel and tried to explain my question. It was even more crude than this: “Me - car number 5” I said as I showed her my ticket. She looked, agreed, and indicated I get back on car 5. “but,” I said “my things in car number13,” to which she replied “Dadadadadadadadada!?” I spread my arms in confused dismay. “Car 13 also go Ningbo?” I asked. She relayed the question, in a way I didn’t understand, to one of her colleagues who reiterated a stern salve of rapid-fire syllables before answering something that calmed everyone down. The first personnel indicated I get back on car 5. Her demeanor answered my query more than anything else. I got back on, and managed to switch back to car 13 towards the end of the trip, where seats were open and my baggage lie where I had left it. Around 10pm, after 24 hours of travel, I had arrived!
I got off the platform, into the station. Other people from the train quickly dispersed, and the station was left deserted. I was expecting someone would meet me there, but there was nobody there! I wasn’t all that unhappy about this next hurdle. I was still very happy to have made it there with all my stuff. Luckily for me there was a decent hotel nearby. I managed to check in, get access to wifi, and make contact with the people expecting me.
9/4/19
Today was not a good day. I had only two lessons, during which both myself and my students, whom I met for the first time, were pretty disappointed and bored. The students themselves are nice. They are industrious and ready to learn. The problem is that the math that I have to teach them they have already learned. They learned it long ago, possibly in middle school. What the hell am I doing there showing them this math, they must have wondered. The feeling is mutual, as I was wondering the same thing myself. I had been told that they would know the math, but would not be familiar with the English description of it, terminology and so forth.
I am not a math teacher. I am an ESL English teacher in a straight jacket, one who is not allowed to discuss potentially interesting things like sports, food and politics, but whose topic matter is restricted to vocabulary words that describe mathematical objects and operations. This idea struck me today after my first lesson with this group, and I was rather depressed for the rest of the day. Somehow I managed to get through the second lesson with the same group without yelling at anybody or breaking down into tears at my fate. Actually the second lesson was somehow better than the first. I came close to actually teaching them something mathematical. Came close, but then it became clear that they knew that portion of the lesson too. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.
I didn’t mention that yesterday was the first day of classes. I came home from work in a more positive mood than I did today. I had met three groups of students, one group from Senior2 and two groups of Senior1 students. S2 students I think correspond to Juniors in American high schools. S1s are like sophomores. I’ve heard there might be S3s somewhere, but I don’t see any of them in the building where I work.
9/6/19
The first week is over. I feel a little numb. It could be worse. I gave math-English lessons to 3 different groups of students. All groups have already seen most of what I have to say regarding math, possibly several times. Nevertheless, two groups went fine by me. The aforementioned remaining group, the so-called A-levels, remain a puzzle that I don’t know how to solve. I will get through them, but nobody will enjoy it. They will be bored and wonder why they have to sit through my lessons. I will wonder the same thing. They should have started this a year ago, maybe two - this fancy-pansy A-levels course offered through some agency in Cambridge.
Next month, many of my colleagues and I will go through some online training offered by this agency. We’ll jump through the hoops for 5 weeks, and then receive some certificate that puts us in the club. And that’s the first round of training. Hey, I hear you say, you’ve got to have an open mind. You’re right. But I heard a British gentleman talk about teaching techniques before this term started. This was a free sample of some professional ‘training’ which quite nearly put me to sleep. It’s not that this chap didn’t have anything valuable to say, but the way in which he said it didn’t exactly exhibit strong teaching skills. ‘You’ve got to be sure to…’ I heard his words as though through a thick fog after he had spoken for about half an hour uninterrupted, my head was nodding, ‘… engage … your … audience!’ Of course I will have an open mind to what these people say over the web. Wether or not I am awake to hear it is another question.
9/12/19
The second week is over. Today is Thursday, tomorrow is a holiday that we have off, I don’t know why. This week was better than last. I feel like I’ve taught some actual math. A few students are openly grateful for some of the things I have shown them. I take their gratitude like a drowning man takes a breath of fresh air. My professional life has meaning as long as they are interested in learning with me.
I have several colleagues at work. They’re all nice people. Among the foreign teachers there are four Americans, rookies like me from Indiana and Colorado who teach chemistry and English as a Second Language, respectively, and a more seasoned ESL teacher from New York who has been there for years. Another rookie teacher at the school from Malaysia teaches economics, and speaks English and Chinese equally very well. A fifth new ESL teacher is from Haarbin in northern China, where the Siberian winter creeps south long enough for some famous ice sculptures during Winter. Also there is another ESL teacher from Toronto. In the same office are two British teachers, both veterans at the school, one a teacher of English, the other of physics.
It occurs to me how poorly I work with other people as I prepare examples or materials for my lesson in our collective office - a classroom converted to office space for some ten people. We all have a cubicle. (As I write this it only occurs to me now that I work at a cubicle. How low have I sunk?) So there I work, thinking up an appropriate example for the math topic at hand, while those ESL teachers are there loudly discussing the great games they’ll play in their class. I say I work poorly with people, maybe I mean next to people. Ten teachers in a classroom is nine too many.
I’m easily annoyed. If I’m focused on something, and you make any sort of noise near me, then you’re annoying. Consider also that I am frequently focused on something. Thus, I am nearly constantly annoyed at certain times of the work day. Maybe it’s a good experience for me. I can practice toning things out. In any case, taking my sensitive nature into consideration I think I am quite satisfied with my coworkers. Things could be a lot worse.
Last weekend I worked on my procrastination skills. I didn’t work much, and did rather well by it. In my experience as a teacher, I find several tasks can take up exactly as much time as you have. Grading papers is one such task. Preparing a class is another. Put those two things together and you’ve just about got the entire job itself. So if ever you try teaching at a school, beware the time-consuming nature of the task at hand.
I say I practice procrastinating. Said differently, you can say I’ve successfully increased my production efficiency. Last weekend was very efficient. On Saturday I studied some Chinese, went out for a walk, came back and studied some more, went out again for something else, came back and got a third round of studying done. Perhaps before the last study session I might have jotted down a few notes about problems to go over in class on Monday. Sunday morning I continued these notes, but then went on an excursion to a nearby Buddhist temple with some of my coworkers and boss.
This temple was nice, if not a little touristy. We had a nice vegan brunch there, then tried going to the top of a mountain. Unfortunately a recent typhoon had damaged portions of the path to the top, and although we pompously went around some of the warning signs, the collective decision was not to temp fate along a steep path that might be washed out underneath. The bamboo forest was also closed because of destruction from the typhoon, but that didn’t stop me from seeing some pretty impressive bamboo groves. In comparison to the small patch of bamboo which someone somehow planted next the water tank at my childhood home in California, the local bamboo here is about twice as tall, and several times as thick at its base. It has the stature more of a birch tree than what I knew to be bamboo, except its ‘trunk’ is hollow, and its roots don’t always grow deep enough to withhold a typhoon.
9/13/19
I just watched the democratic debates in Houston Texas featuring the apparent top-ten candidates for the democratic Presidential nominee next year.
I remain perplexed why Joe Biden has been leading in the polls. Who is conducting these polls? Who is responding? I believe that if Biden gets the nomination, then he will lose to Trump for the exact same reasons that Clinton did. He’s too close to the establishment. People who voted for Trump wanted something new, and they got it. You may like Trump or not, but I don’t think his presidency is so disastrous that people would now opt for someone like Biden, or even Clinton were she running. The democratic establishment will lose again. What the democratic party needs is someone as rebellious as Trump. Sanders comes to mind, but so do a number of people who were on the stage tonight. The idea of electing Biden is like putting a bandaid over whatever faults might have been perceived in Obama or Clinton. Maybe Biden supporters think that he’s is more electable because he’s white, and a man. If these features are qualifications, that only goes to show how slow we’re moving along. Outside of these qualities, Biden offers nothing more than what we heard in 2016 or since 2008. His policy is a tepid response, at best, to the problems our country and planet face. It’s a sad day when democrats have become so conservative as to choose a Biden over some of his competitors.
I’ve been a supporter of Bernie Sanders since his 2016 candidacy. I still support him, although I question his ability of passing his policy should he be President over a republican Senate. I like him because he strikes me as the most authentic of any politician I’ve ever seen. He means what he says. I’ve noticed though that even he plays dodgeball when someone asks him a sensitive question. During the debates, one question is whether taxes on the middle class will go up in order to pay for his Medicare for All plan. I presume that the answer is yes, but Sanders won’t allow himself to say that, which I don’t like. It tarnishes his aura of authenticity and honesty. Instead Sanders will focus on the points that taxes will go up significantly for the very wealthy, and that costs will go down for everyone who needs health care. These are fair points, but such fear towards the T word marks a victory for Republicans and the billionaires they represent.
Sanders is not alone in his cowardice. Every politician plays the game in what they consider to be a prudent manner, except for one who comes to mind. To his credit, Trump knows no fear. He doesn’t balk at saying anything. And while he comes across to many Americans as ignorant, arrogant, racist and sexist, I think his disregard for the political game has been more of an asset to his success than a liability. The democrats need someone who can play the same game. That doesn’t mean they need a candidate who offends others with everything he or she says, but one who can redefine the political game to their favor. Joe Biden is definitely not that person.
9/16/19
The long weekend is over. It was good. I got a little sunburned on Friday, walking out at midday. I found the park I was looking for, but the tree cover was not enough to protect me from a clear sky on a sunny day. I stumbled upon a bike shop of Giant-brand bikes. I walked inside and was happy to see the place empty but for a single salesman. ‘I look a little’ I tried to say. He understood. I asked eventually, ‘I look, one this expensive’ pointing to a price tag I saw on a display bike, something around 300 US dollars. I think he understood. ‘Is there a big one?’ I asked. He said something I didn’t understand. Then he said a sentence that included two English words, the letters ’S’ and ‘M.’ I asked to see an M. ‘Can I try it?’ I asked, by which I meant test-drive. I didn’t know if I should leave something behind for this to happen. I offered my smart phone, he laughed and escorted me to the sidewalk outside. I raised the seat a bit, and rode it there and back, only a few meters. It was enough to know that M was too small. ‘This one bigger is there?’ I asked. He said a sentence that included the explanation, ‘this one biggest here.’ I expressed regret in body language. I said I will think a bit. Possibly I come back next week. He acknowledged my expression. I thanked him and left. I was on the way home by then, but I stopped by a department store called ‘Vanguard’ to buy some stuff: several notebooks, a waste-paper basket, some food. I shopped for food again closer to home at the shop I’ve been visiting regularly. I often get some dragon fruit there, which I’ve come to like, as well as standard food items: green veggies like broccoli and cabbage; peanuts, unsalted; buckwheat; dried mushrooms, and other random things I try occasionally.
I got home, prepared some food. Studied a bit, avoided work, went to bed, slept quite well.
Saturday I had two walks, one in the morning, one in the late afternoon. The middle of the day I spent studying Chinese and working. I blew well over an hour trying to get some technology to do what I wanted - to get some files from my Chinese Huawei-brand smart phone to my mac laptop. Bluetooth is allegedly available, but doesn’t work; the cable connection was also not working. The problem with the latter seemed to be that I couldn’t download files that I had received on the phone via WeChat (that’s like the Chinese version of Skype) onto the phone itself. Eventually I got some email service set up on the phone, and managed to email myself the files I wanted, then download them onto the mac. This took a long time. Very frustrating.
It was nice to leave the house again for another walk that afternoon. I walked to the culture plaza, which encompasses a couple of blocks about a mile from where I live. They have a cinema there, which I visited. I was happy that I managed to find it, I wasn’t sure I would be. I didn’t stay for a movie, but explored the mall there a bit more. I had been shown around this place within the first few days I was here, but being shown something is nothing like discovering it for yourself - that’s one credo any teacher might take to heart. So I explored the place again. I found the bookstore we had visited the first time, and perused it at my leisure. There wasn’t much to look at as all the books were in Chinese. I can hardly read any of it, and am very dismayed by this. I only spent as much time there as I did because the little English I did see often indicated the author of a book, or the title of a bookshelf. I say some books by Stephen King, Dostoevsky, and others. It would be great fun to reread some of these books in my new language, but my Chinese skills are not nearly there yet. I’m currently struggling through reading the third entry of the Diary of Anne Frank in Chinese. This was written by a 14 year old author before she was murdered by the Nazis. 14 years old, but her story comes across like very intricate literature when you read it in Chinese, such is my knowledge of the written Chinese characters. I also have one of the Harry Potter books in Chinese. Anne Frank is the easier to read of the two, so I’ll continue with her.
9.21.19
Week three is over. I’ve reached this point feeling rather overwhelmed with the job. I miss the comfort and ease of life in San Francisco. I wish I didn’t. I wish life were easy here too, but it won’t be for awhile yet. I think my students are as overwhelmed as I am with school work, which doesn’t help. What is their schedule like?
They have very little free time over the course of a 5-day week. They are at home on the weekends, where they may have tons of homework. If they don’t, parents get angry at the school. They return to the school Sunday evening, are woken around 6:30 on Monday morning, breakfast at 7, and their first lesson starts around 7:30. Lessons are only 40 minutes long, but they have 12 lesson periods every day. That’s 480 minutes, or 8 hours, every day. The subjects studied by the students whom I see include English, Chinese, Chemistry in English, Economics in English, math in English with me (too easy), math in Chinese with a local teacher (harder), physics in English (also too easy), physics in Chinese, history in Chinese, and PE. There might be a few more I’m missing. I think some of the students’ periods are allotted to self study time, when they may complete homework as they see fit. Period 12 ends around 9pm. They are to be in bed by something like 9:45.
This sort of control I think is nothing out of the ordinary in this country. I imagine that the entire culture is this authoritarian in nature. I am guarded under the wing of my boss, the VP of the international division, who is from India. So I am allowed my own lifestyle, except that the demands placed on the student transfer to demands towards me. If I didn’t give homework, for example, I would get in trouble. So I give homework, and am hard pressed not to make it a complete cakewalk for my students. Such low-level work is more of a nuisance to them than anything else, as they would prefer time to focus on other things.
Slowly I am able to challenge some students, and I’m slowly clarifying who is capable and who is not. I am happy to see that some students don’t know math well, or that they make mistakes. Maybe I can help. Maybe my professional life here won’t be a total waste of time.
Next week is a long week before Autumn break. As in Russia, Chinese authorities move work days around in order to accommodate holidays. So next week we will work Saturday and Sunday before having the following seven days off. Saturday is to be a Monday workday, and Sunday is to be a Tuesday. Don’t ask me what happens to Wednesday or the rest. I just follow orders.
I won’t have my passport back from residence permit processing, so I won’t be able to travel during the week-long break. I suppose I can explore Ningbo a bit more, though I would have liked to go a bit further.
9.23.19
The weekend was all right. Yesterday I got out, after planning today’s lesson, around 3pm. I took a four hour walk to and from a part of town I hadn’t visited yet. I didn’t see this district in its entirety, but what little I saw looked rather touristy. There was a Bierhooefengaarden, or something like that, at the head of a cobblestone street the likes of which you see in many cities in Europe. The route there and back was not very spectacular, except that there are written Chinese characters all over the place. I’m illiterate in this world, but I have a fairly smart phone. I have a Chinese dictionary app that lets me scrawl the characters I see onto the touch-screen. By some miracle it often recognizes what I’m trying to write. I confirm the phone’s estimate, and it tells me the characters I entered - how to pronounce them, and what they mean. By this method I encounter very many characters. I encounter them, but don’t learn them very well, since one piece of new information is quickly replaced by the next - so many are the characters that I do not know.
It was dark when I got back. I made myself some steamed cabbage on top of noodles, and went to bed. I slept like a baby, with two solid dreams that I remember. One dream featured an old friend of mine that looks like the actor James Franco. I was blind in this dream, and the friend was flicking me in the face with his finger, laughing at my blindness. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I landed my fist into the friend’s face, possibly breaking his nose, I don’t know because I couldn’t see. But he didn’t flick me anymore. That was the first dream. In the second dream I was at home in Napa, where there is a bedroom upstairs with a window facing a garden below the hill of a reservoir that feeds the vineyards off in the distance. In the dream, unlike reality, this bedroom contained a wood-burning stove which we used to have in a room downstairs. The stove was burning hot. There was concern that it was too hot. The floor up there is carpeted. I wanted to enter the room, but the door was locked. I got in. Wanted to tone the stove down. The closet in the room, next to the window, was taped closed. Why? And so what? But the dream ended there.
Today was OK. The lesson I planned went basically as planned, which is not necessarily good. The first part came across all right. The second part not so. I’ll try the same lesson tomorrow, but with a weaker class, one with students who have a whole five-second attention span, a class where I have to exhibit my professional baby-sitting skills, of which I have none. Another lesson that I had given last week to another group went all right. Again, students’ attention span towards mathematics is rather limited. I’m not inspiring them enough, hence it’s my fault. I feel I won’t last long at this job.
I came home after an extra hour of ECA (more on this later), and had some fruit, some cabbage, and an egg. I’m not vegan anymore, I’ve been eating eggs for the past week. I’m still vegetarian though, and I avoid dairy products like the plague. If you consider eggs to be dairy, then I’ll say I avoid milk products like the plague. Why? Just call it a gut feeling that dairy helped accelerate my father’s demise, along with the realization that there is really no reason for a grown man to be drinking milk of any sort, much less from the tit of a cow. Anyway, I’m still vegetarian by some standards. I’ve recently been enjoying something that my smart phone translates to Japanese Rohdea. Wikipedia tells me that it might be toxic, but it’s on the shelf in this country. It’s very tasty, and maybe makes for some interesting dreams. Good night!
9.29.19
I just got back from work. If you’re savvy with the math behind dates, you may recognize that today is Sunday, which is a strange day to be working. I think I mentioned above that Chinese authorities block work days and days off together in order optimize long vacations. We here in China just put in a seven-day work week, and now we get seven days off. Is it worth it? Tough to say right now. I’m pretty beat.
Yesterday an S1 class really pissed me off. I generally have little patience for bullshit behavior. I have even less when I’m tired and stressed, like after working six days. The students were giving me a bunch of bullshit, so I walked out, slamming the door behind me. That got their attention. I blew off some steam for a few minutes, then went back in. They were more attentive for the rest of class. I’m afraid to think what I might do the next time I’m stressed and receiving studential bullshit. Some Chinese teachers are known to severely berate their students publicly. I could see myself giving a good scolding, though being public I find is not necessary. I would really love to be able to ask the student to leave the room for a few minutes, but this is not allowed. Allegedly there was a case of a student jumping several stories to their death because of the shame caused by such an eviction.
Today we had our first house competition. The students in our international program are split up into separate houses, or teams. Apparently they do this at Eaton College in the UK, but I recognize the system as the one from Harry Potter, where students were either in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin. In our school the houses are simply given colors. I’m the leader of the red team, though I don’t know if many of the red team members recognize me as such, as they might not understand me when I speak English, nor do I understand some of them in any language they attempt.
So in this competition today we presented our team flag with a short speech. I thought our team did really well, but the judges, consisting of foreign teachers in the GaoKao program, as well as some Chinese teachers, seemed to disagree. I didn’t see our final score, but we weren’t mentioned in the final tally. The second portion of the competition consisted in a basketball tournament. Our team has two or three people who actually practice basketball. One big guy who can’t do much anything else except play basketball, until he gets tired; one short skinny guy who might weigh less than the ball itself, but who somehow still manages to get some nice shots in.
10.?.19
I’ve turned off the date and time on my computer, so I don’t know with certainty what day or time it is. I think it’s the 5th. I think it’s around 4pm. I’ve been on vacation for the past several days. This idea of turning off the time occurred to me a few days ago. I’ve done well to avoid my new smart phone too, which is too smart to have the option of turning off the time. Maybe the option is there, but I don’t recognize it behind the Chinese characters - too smart for me.
I’ve been reading a lot, relative to what I’d been reading previously, which is next to nothing. Actually I’ve been listening to audiobooks regularly since I came home from Germany 14 years ago. Sure enough, in San Francisco I often brought them with me (downloaded on my smart phone) on long walks to the market or the library. I was recently dismayed that my subscription at audible.de has so little to offer in Chinese, though it has a lot in other languages that I’ve studied. I still listen to some of the works in Spanish that I ordered long ago. It’s amazing how easy Spanish is after studying some Chinese. I still can’t speak it to save my life, but I think I might understand the news in Spanish if I could listen. Maybe someday Chinese will be easy.
In addition to these audiobooks, I’ve read more of the few books that I brought here: a small collection of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, a collection of short stories by Isabelle Allende, and a novel by Peter Matthiessen called “The Snow Leopard.” The latter book is one I tried to get into a few times before, but it would not stick. Perhaps this time circumstances are such that reading it fits my life better now than it did before. With a little commitment I could have it finished before going back to work in a few days, but such a push would defeat its purpose. Reading a novel is like going on a hike, it’s like living a life, as though the story itself is alive. Furthermore, my perspective on hiking, on living, is more and more that the purpose is in the journey itself, not the destination. This thought is just scratching the surface of one form of Buddhism or another, many of which come up in the novel. Even further from the Christian lessons that I was served at catechism classes, where life is assumed linear (with a positive slope) rather than circular, is the claim that there is no meaning to be had whatsoever, that ‘meaning’ is meaningless.
Such thoughts come up in this story, but this book is all the more a journey as it chronicles the author’s expedition with his biologist friend deep into the Himalayas to observe some mountain sheep behavior. I like reading about the details of this trek, because it’s easy for me to relate to. Thus, I’ve managed to escape in a book like I haven’t in a long time. I could have attempted to travel somewhere these past few days, but I knew not where nor why I would go, other than to get away. I was told Shanghai would be very crowded for the holiday, so I’ve enjoyed this book instead.
I’ve also gone on a few runs. Whether this means I will be able to go running regularly is another question. A groin injury has bothered me for longer than I care to admit. Suffice it to say that groin injuries were unknown to me until know. A sore hamstring or pain in the foot I would greet like an old friend, but this pain was an unexpected visitor, one which is overstaying its visit. I’ve got to know it better and better over the last few months. I know what actions make it thrive, and these actions I seek to avoid. Of course, improper stretching is behind its longevity. There are muscles on the inside of your thigh which run along its entire length, I think, from knee to hip. They connect somewhere inside you, above your genitals and under your belly button. This point where they connect has been sore. Consequently these long inner-thigh muscles have been sensitive. I’ve discovered that stretching them is a bad idea. For the past few days I’ve gone running and practiced minimal to no stretching afterward. After an evening run I have dinner, shower, then elevate my hips and ice the area before going to sleep. There is notable improvement. I shall continue this procedure until improvement stops.
I will miss stretching though. The practice of stretching, called Yoga by some, definitely has some potential for a positive impact on one’s day. But stretching is such a complicated science. There may be some general features to it, but it is also an individual science because we are not all built in the same way. So stretching very much requires what yogis call self-awareness, recognizing one’s limits, one’s strengths and weaknesses. I’m still learning.
10.?+1.19
I spent most of the day prepping for lessons tomorrow. I’ve hardly been outside, which is no big loss since the air isn’t so clean today. Also, I’ve got pandora radio back for the time being, so I’m enjoying some of my old music. Surprisingly preparations ran more smoothly after I started listening. Usually music can distract me from work, which perhaps it did anyway, but when you’re getting distracted no matter what, maybe it’s nice to be able to choose what will steal your attention.
I’ve enjoyed running for the past several days, today excepted. Even if the air were good, I would have rested today. Yesterday I may have come close to overdoing it. I was on a track, ‘sprinting’ the straight aways. I say ‘sprinting’ because I’m sure there are some grandpas who can jog faster than I was going, but my legs felt it enough. Even my hamstring was letting itself be known, thus the inner thigh muscles are not the only limitation. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Now I just have to remember what I practiced in my last marathon - resting is as important as running. Previous marathons I had run almost daily, struggling to get in 40 miles in one week. This past marathon (last march) I made an effort to run no more than 3 days a week, but I maxed out over 50 miles in one week. And the marathon went pretty well. I went slower than before, but I crossed the finish line with a smile on my face. ‘Feel the Bernhold’ my shirt said after a minor adjustment to the classic ‘Feel the Bern’ logo for Bernie Sanders. The adjustment was in honor of my deceased father, Bernhold Rankenburg. He never ran with me in real life, but I still closed my eyes in a few moments during the race and imagined him running beside me. You might have heard him say to people he passed, or even people who passed him, ‘wow, you run really fast for such terrible posture!’ or ‘hey, great job! I’m sure you’ll come in first place in your weight class.’ He had a wry sense of humor.
I finished reading ‘The Snow Leopard’ after all. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I may have missed the point. It served a purpose for me, in that it got me out of the apartment, in thought at least. I had a great escape. But still I look at the book in a sort of linear fashion, how can I not? It has a beginning, middle and end. It has a climax, after which you hurry to finish it in order to start something new. Isn’t life that way too? But then maybe I’m thinking of it in a Christian fashion again. The book is at least in part about Buddhism, though the author claims no authority on the subject, he says a lot about it nevertheless. On one hand, everything has a beginning and an end, but on the other hand beginning and end suggest a sort of temporal delineation, which puts me back to thinking of things as a line. It appears that Buddhists attempt to transcend this linearity, insisting that only the present moment exists or has ever existed. Ask a buddhist what time it is, he will answer: right now.
Today is the 7th, by the way. I’ve turned on the computer’s date and time panel. It’s time to go back to work.
