The end of the semester approaches!

I am outlining and researching for a paper comparing Renewable Energy Law in Germany and China. This points my research at the intersection of economic development and environmental protection in the two legal systems. It needs to be 5,000 characters by the end of the semester, which in double-spaced English would be upwards of 15 pages and in Chinese will be 10 or so.

The Chinese constitution mentions environmental protection in it's "General Principles" section, but does not include a clean environment in its fundamental rights (or Bill of Rights). The Environmental Protection Law is extensive, and the largest problem is that it is not enforced locally. It includes a clause stating that the appropriate government department will "in accordance with the national standards for environment quality and the country's economic and technological conditions, establish the national standards for the discharge of pollutants."

I am hoping to get a feel for the different strengths and weaknesses of approach between 'developed' country with relatively strict environmental policies (ie, Germany) and a quickly 'developing' country where economic development still for the most part takes places with little or no regard to environmental protection.

Not sure why this blog post gets so many dang views

Previously titled: 罗亚死了，罗亚死了

April has been a good month in a lot of ways.

First, a friend of a friend visited Nanjing, and in helping to show her the city I finally saw a bit of the city myself. We went to Purple Mountain:

(this buddha statue was created as a tourist attraction in the late 90's, and we saw some other folks sitting on his lap, so we decided we wouldn't be disrespecting him or anyone else by following suit)

And visited a temple and a Ming Dynasty city wall that are both within 30 minutes walking distance from my Center. Who knew?

Pagoda in the temple:

View of the lake and Ming wall from the top of the pagoda:

I have ALSO been buying myself some books. These include: an anthology of Chinese fantasy writing from 2008, "Swordbird" (a book written by an 11 year old Chinese girl who lives in the US in both Chinese and English. Think Redwall series, except birds. Holding swords), a Chinese dictionary (not Chinese-English. Just Chinese), and a copy of China's National Geographic (or 黄夏地理). Xiaoxuan just helped me order a science fiction anthology and a selection of Lu Xun's writings (linked to Wikipedia). He was a very influential thinker in the decades after the Nationalist revolution in 1911. Many Chinese have to read bits of his writing in high school, and the woman that I have been helping to practice English highly recommended reading his complete stories (as in full texts, not necessarily everything he's written).

I am feeling good about my life plan. This is good. I have been feeling foolishly insecure all year about one thing or another. The plan a little farther out: I am moving to Korea next year, then I think back to China to work for a year and reapplying to grad schools for fall 2012. Then I'm hoping somewhere will let me teach and take students abroad, and maybe I'll work on a PhD.

I've realized I need to actually post about China more, and not keep this blog so self-centered. Now that I feel like I've got myself figured out a little more (haha, ask tomorrow) that is my plan. If you've got questions to guide my writing, I'd love to hear 'em!

Title is from one of the fantasy stories I'm reading, yo. "Luoya is dead, Luoya is dead"

She may cry but her tears will dry when I hand her the keys to a shiney new Australia

Welp, I have some major updates on the status on my brain and future plans.

Update Eins: I did not get into grad school. Despite the feelings of numerous friends and relatives, I do not seem to be the end-all, be-all of prospective researchers. Since I’d decided that I NEED some time away from school, this is really okay. My ego remains slightly bruised, but my ego generally needs to be taken down a notch or two.

Update Zwei: I am planning on moving to Korea in the fall to teach English for a year. This will give me some more experience teaching, and hopefully help me decide if I’m aiming to teach kids or older students. After I get the lesson planning figured out, it will also give me lots of time to work on other projects and figure myself out.

Update Drei: I’m afraid that right now I’m not planning on coming back to the US this summer. Plane tickets are expensive, and I’ve decided to use the money to travel around China since I’ll still have a visa to be here the rest of the summer. This I’m traveling with a Canadian friend and then visiting Xiaoxuan’s family in Hebei Province, near Beijing.

Update Vier: I love you!

Title is from "Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog"

Final thoughts on Bazhong

I’m not really sure where to start updating you about the rest of the week. Definitely the best and most important part was working with the kidsI think pretty much all of them were excited about my class simply because it took them away from normal assignments and classwork (as any self-respecting seventh grader should be) and many were also excited to meet us.

Playing Jeopardy in our second lesson with each class was hilarious. It wasn’t exactly Jeopardy, we had lots of questions about US culture and such divided into two groups: Easy and Hard. When I explained the game, I first told them that I’d be asking them questions and some of them would be hard, then that they were in groups, then that each group would choose either an easy question or a hard one. Whenever Genbao finished translating that, everyone would yell “Easy!” and I would put my hands up and say “but! And easy question is worth ten points, and a hard question is worth thirty” and a hush would be followed by whispers of “三十”[thirty]and sometimes a round of yelled “Hard!” They were attentive and excited about the questions. I didn’t tell anyone out loud if they were right or not- half the time looking back at the kids anxiously before doing so. The scores were always greeting with cheers and groans.

I think I mentioned before that Genbao was a fantastic co-teacher. He helped a lot (one could also say “did most of the work”) lesson planning, and then the night before we first taught he said “I think that because you are native speaker, you should teach. And I- I will translate!” He was great.

We got a good reputation because we spent a lot of time of phonics the first day- all the teachers who sat in on our class did all the phonics work along with me and the kids.

The more ridiculous things are usually a better story, but I’m afraid that focusing on them too easily gives a skewed vision of my life in China.

Ridiculous Thing 1, I already mentioned, was in my mind the fact that we met with the mayor and local Communist Party Secretariat. They wanted to meet with us to support our visit, and possibly the fellowship that’s supposed to be happening in Bazhong next year. It was a kind gesture, overall, but still a strange one.

Ridiculous Thing 2 involved our return trip. On the way there I and three other classmates rode a train to Guangyuan, the nearest train station. We rode the public bus, which is scheduled to take three and a half hours, driving on mountain rodes and stopping now and then to let passangers off. Our trip back to Guangyuan took only a little more than two hours. Why, you ask? And I will tell you. We took a different road, a highway. Why does the public bus not use this highway? Well, I’ll tell you that too. It isn’t finished. No one uses it. We loaded onto a bus, our luggage crammed in around us, with two students in a small silver sedan along with the school’s headmaster leading the way. The sedan and our bus flashed their hazard lights the whole way- “foreigners on board-foreigners on board-attention.” We breezed past a family car stopped at the blockade and onto the unopened section of the highway. We had to turn around on one overpass, the middle of which was blocked off with piles of construction materials, sending us down an entrance ramp and back up the other side. We passed many groups of construction workers who got out of the way for us to pass.

Overall, the trip was awesome. I got closer to some classmates, got to interact with a bunch of really bright students both in my classes in the middle school and at the high school English Corner. I returned worn out but very happy.

Sichuan updates

Updates that I wrote while I was in Bazhong are below, dated according to when I wrote them (I'm just uploading them tonight). I'm working on an entry covering the rest of the week, but it'll take me a little longer.

Love!

Eigentlich konnten wir uns freuen

A good first day of teaching! Although I really don’t know what to do with the teachers and their expectations- as far as they are concerned this trip has been one of misunderstandings and silly expectations- the kids are fantastic. Teachers (at least two, up to five) sat in on every one of our classes today. Genbao kept saying how nervous it made him during our breaks, and I kept telling him not to worry about them; just focus on the kids. The teachers stared at us pretty stonily most of the time, but I managed to ignore them pretty effectively. Apparently one of the high school teachers pulled aside one of the HNC students teaching there and asked if we were teaching majors. No. No, we are not. We are English speakers, and that’s all we got. I think they’re expecting us to revolutionize their teaching methods. Whatever. I’m sure someone saw that we are from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies and decided they wanted us to be teaching majors and passed that wish along.

Anyway. The kids are fantastic. They are attentive and curious and really excited to speak English with us. I am teaching seventh grade or 初一， the first year of junior middle school. The kids are twelve or thirteen and look about nine. They just about swoon when I manage to catch a single student’s eye and smile at them. They told me that that I am very beautiful (a stretch, at best) and my handwriting is very good (an outright falsehood) and after two of the five classes I taught today I was surrounded by a swarm demanding I autograph their textbooks or notebooks or the flags that Genbao and I gave out as prizes for our most challenging activity. Our third class asked for my phone number. I said, Chinese or American? and they said Chinese of course! but none of them have called or texted me yet.

We were told to assume that the seventh graders would know next to nothing, and were pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t true. They definitely can’t have very elevated conversations, but they can follow my instructions that have to do with the textbook and the activities in it. We asked what they wanted to be when they grow up and everyone who answered in English (we told them they could speak Chinese in the hopes that they would give us real answers and not just convenient ones, but few of them complied- I think all the teachers in the back were making them nervous too). We got quite a few “I want to be a policeman/woman. Although it is a little dangerous, the work is quite interesting.”s and another set of “I want to be a reporter. I will meet interesting people every day.”s and quite a few “I want to be an English teacher, because English is very interesting”s. I’m not sure how much of a difference we can honestly make in two class periods with each class of eighty (for a total of an hour and a half of very divided attention for each student). I am trying, and Genbao has been awesome at reminding me, to walk up and down through the classroom while I am talking and having them answer questions or practice pronunciation so that I can hear more of them and they all feel like they have been close to and approved by a Native English Speaker (more than that: An American).

Every time the class split into pairs there was always a student or two who ended up by themselves, by coincidence, their choice, or their classmates’ judgment I was never sure. It gave me the chance to pair up with them. I got a few pretty awesome facial expressions when I said “Can I be your partner?” Eyes went wide with a mixture of joy and pure terror. Most of the kids did really well for their level of English.

One boy sat in the back and didn’t understand enough to pay attention unless Genbao was translating. I did the “Is Mary doing her homework?” exercise with him one-on-one when he ended up alone. He had a lot of trouble- didn’t know any of the recent vocab, pronunciation was way off and very very hesitant. He looked at me like he was waiting for me to give up on him and move on to a smarter student- his smile seemed to shrug and his eyes apologized even while they were begging for approval. We went through a couple and he successfully said and (I really think) understood “No, she is eating dinner.” I told him good job and smiled at him so that I hope he believed me, but I don’t really think he did. Another girl I talked to one on one wasn’t too good at English, but I got the feeling it was because she didn’t care. This kid didn’t seem to think he had the right to care (I infer from kids like him I have known). He was paying attention and willing to work, and I’m sure if he had just a little extra help he’d be able to do just fine- I’m pretty confident that he will end up with no option but to go back to his home village. Kids don’t end up with expressions that hopeless if English is the only subject they’ve been convinced they’re hopeless at. I’d be angry, but there isn’t anywhere constructive to direct it, so I’m letting the anger go. There are over a thousand students in each grade, about eighty in every class. These teachers are not the best (though they are decent), or many might have chosen to live somewhere other than Bazhong. So I’m just resolved to keep trying to keep eye contact with him and the others who look like they don’t think they belong in school.

So, we were told we were coming to 中国一个非常贫困的地方－one of the poorest places in China. This is not true. Bazhong is definitely out of the way, and not one of the places that tourists generally frequent, but it is only poor and under-developed enough not to be too embarassing to the Chinese government. One of my classmates who’s also on this trip spent some time as a volunteer English teacher with an organization focused on sending teachers to poor villages. Most of her colleagues, she said, ended up in cities where they were not needed because they were not allowed into the really poor areas. The Chinese government is very sensitive to being seen as 落后 (backwards) and is growing tired of lectures on 人权 (human rights) , and wants the world to marvel when we realize that all of their problems are solved rather than continuously telling them what they do wrong (I think). This is a complicated country.

We are being banqueted (again- the school administrators already fed us very well last night, and our HNC administrator took us all out for hotpot tonight) by some higher-ups in the regional government tomorrow. I think at the expense of our time at the high school English Corner, which... would not be my choice of priorities. But one surrenders some amount of judgment about time management when entering into arrangements like a week of teaching English in China. We are actually quite sheltered from bureaucracy at our little Center, though of course we complain about what we do encounter.

The man who picked Genbao, Sean, Fan Yi and I up from the high school where we ate lunch and took us back to the middle school to teach wore an electric blue jacket with neon green and black polka dots (which, I later discovered, were carefully coordinated with electric blue plush sneakers). His hair, without any product that I could detect, put of the rest of us to shame with its rebellious and care-free volume. His ride was bright red, something like a shortened PT Cruiser. He was blasting what Sean informed me was like Tibetan techno,; it switched back and forth between an instrument I would describe as “beautiful” and “traditional” and a rousing chorus of “If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck” all over a thumping bass line. Sean asked if I had ever been to the Tibetan Plateau (which includes part of Western Sichuan and much of Qinghai province as well as Tibet itself). When I told him I had not, he helped put the song in a more 地道 (authentic) context. He said that Tibetan men –truly manly men- ride around on motorcycles, long black hair flowing out from under their cowboy hats, with techno blasting from speakers on the back of the bike. A cloud of dust, the gleam of sunlight on high cheekbones, the increasingly insistent thump of techno: this is my impression of Tibetans. I would like to get to the plateau and round it out a bit, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards this trip.

Yang Genbao and I spent about an hour and a half (close to two hours, actually) finishing our lesson plans for tomorrow. Wu Dai, who’s teaching the other 初一 class, joined us for a while. The kids’ English is seriously multiple times better than we were told to expect, so we’re trying to make our lesson plans more complex. We have three more new classes tomorrow morning (we had five today) and then have two second-time classes in the afternoon.

Teaching is hard work, eh?

Though actually each of the English teachers here is only in charge of one or two classes that meet every day, and not eight different classes five in a day with no future idea of what to expect from them. I’m sure they’re still plenty worn out when they get home.

Okay, heading to bed. It’s 11:40 and they come to pick us up at 7:50.

[Things one does not miss after leaving China: grey-black pollution boogers. I may have said this before. I seriously will not miss them at all. They seriously happen a lot. No hyperbole. Blackness. In my nose. From the air.]

Xavier Naidoo's "Eigentlich Gut"

In which I continue to overwork the gentle comma and the sisters parenthetical

Long distance train rides will make a documentarian out of anyone. The scenes that flash by demand explanation. How were these mountains formed? When were they terraced? How many generations have used oxen to plough that field?

I got to the Nanjing Train Station with my three classmates/traveling companions about forty minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. We found the aisle waiting to board the K290 bound for Chengdu already full, and so threw down our backpacks and bags of food and sat in the aisle next to it. A boy probably a bit younger than us was going around with a cup begging for change. He stopped in front of Yang Genbao and then me; Genbao suggested I make a trip to the restroom after it became obvious the kid wasn’t going to give up. I don’t like ignoring people who obviously need help, but at the same time giving a mute boy one Yuan isn’t long term help. And also, once you have definitively revealed yourself as an easy mark in public spaces in China, you will get no rest.

Train station waiting rooms are frequented by beggars, as well as vendors walking around with maps and newspapers. It has worked out all right for me in that by telling beggars that I am not going to give me money I often let other train-waiters around me know that I speak Chinese, and a conversation can start.

This time, however, I already had people to talk to, so when our train was 20 minutes late, I wasn’t bored.

We rode in a hard sleeper car, which I think I described for my trip from Guangzhou to Nanjing. I slept in the middle bunk this time, which was a hundred times more comfortable than the top bunk. I could see out of the window from my bed this time, and had a bit more room to move around. I tried going without the Dramamine, since I ended up still uncomfortable for the whole train ride with it last time (as well as unconscious for the majority of it...). I drank lots of water, and slept a fair amount, and didn’t feel sick at all.

I learned a three-person Chinese card game (with Mitch and Genbao) called 抖地主or “Overthrow the Landlord” (which Mitch and I speculated is probably at least forty years old).

Our 25 hours on the trian passed more or less without event. The scenery was beautiful in the morning when we had reached Sichuan province (Genbao said we had passed Xi’an- where the tomb of the first Chinese emporer and his ceramic warriors hang out) in the night without knowing it. Spring is well on its way here.

The view from the train was incredible in the morning. The terraced mountains were highlighted with the occasional line of yellow safflower fields, and the light green of new deciduous tree growth seemed to be gentle waking up the dark evergreens. I love trains. I could listen to music and look out a train window happily for days, I think.

The bus from Guangyuan to Bazhong was supposed to take three and a half hours. We spent an extra hour sitting on the side of the road with cars and trucks honking at us after our driver realized he had lost the key to the luggage compartment. He left the bus’s Karaoke (卡拉OK) television on though, and I had snacks, so it wasn’t too bad.

To People Living With- living with- living with- NOT Dying from Disease

I'm sure not what's caused this recent eruption in thoughts I want to share here but I think it portends good things about my mental health, so let's go with it.

The title is from the song "La Vie Boheme" in RENT. I can't say that I am a proponent of the 'bohemian' lifestyle, but I am very much a proponent of the fearlessness and freedom in this soundtrack. So, I guess, if the choice is between la vie boheme and condemning those who choose it, color me bohemian.

The oft-quoted "be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" (or something like that?) comes to mind. We are all living with disease, and it has only been in reminding myself of this that I have recently started climbing further out of it. All of us have things that drag us down if we don't name and face them. We're much like the witches of fairy tales that way; "tell me your true name, and you are in my power." To addiction, fear, and self-loathing and I say: we are stronger than you.

The thought has often occurred to me that those of us with something to recover from- disease, addiction, war, divorce- are the lucky ones (that is, of course IF we get help. otherwise we are just spectacularly in the dark). I think that lives are measured more in direction than in places, and it is easier for us to see the low we are coming from and point ourselves up. If we started at Content, how would we see which way fulfillment lies? Really, though, I think the challenge is for people who think they are supposed to be content, and can't see why they aren't. There are so many shades of pain and struggle that go unnamed and untreated. Let me say this (to myself as much as anyone else): if you are unhappy there is a valid reason. You deserve help, and help is possible. Keep looking for it.

I think that sometimes addiction and disease are almost attractive because of that earlier thought, though. If you have a problem that obvious, it can (from the outside, at least) make it easier to see what would make your life better. And I have seen the depth of love and wisdom that many survivors have been able to reach through their circumstances. I am grateful for all of my struggles, as they've pushed me into the direction I'm going. At the same time, I don't really think it is pain that makes us beautiful. Perhaps pain is just one of the things that shows us our beauty most clearly.

I don't think there is any limit to joy that we humans can experience. I don't think there is anyone who cannot be happier, healthier, stronger. I think that is a blessing.

These thoughts started while I was sitting in Ecoffee (壹咖啡）reading for my East Asian Economies (东亚经济) class. I was reading the World Bank's report on the "East Asian Miracle" (yes, in Chinese. No, not understanding everything). In the last century, we have done a lot of naming. We have named inequalities and injustices, and I think many people get discouraged, frustrated, or even angry at the growing list. But I urge us all to see it as progress. The more problems we name, the more problems we can overcome.

This sentence resonated on this chord for me: “东亚经济增长最快的国家和地区，即日本和”四小虎“也是收入分配最公平的经济实体” It says that the countries and regions with the fastest economic development, Japan and the "Four Little Tigers" [Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong] are also the countries with the most equal distributions of income.

Equality is not a goal for the sake of those currently at the bottom. It is for all of us. I do not demand sanity and happiness purely for my own sake; with them I will be best able to better the world. If women's status in the world becomes equal to men's, it will not just be women who are better off. All of humanity will benefit from their knowledge, wisdom, and perspective. At the same time, all of humanity would lose greatly if men's status was dragged below women's (this same holds true for the gaps between people of different races, classes, backgrounds, nationalities, etc).

You are not doing anyone any favors by accepting unhappiness. Seek help, seek enlightenment, demand help, offer love and friendship freely. Love life, accept nothing less than wonderful.

(Not much of a travel blog, is this?)

I can't get to sleep// I think about the implications// of diving in too deep// and "possibly"- the complications

I went to bed around 11:30 last night, after having emailed about a couple of english teaching jobs in China and worked on my application for TaLK in Korea. I think I fell asleep around 3am. I wasn't unhappy; I've done the anxiety insomnia thing and this wasn't it. Still processing what I should do next year. I've decided to teach English wherever I am, since I don't know what else I'd want to do and it would be good for me to investigate teaching more formally. I'm feeling good about that decision. The task now is to find secure places to work that will pay me enough to save a bit of money and work on paying back my loans. I know that's possible with either of the government programs in Korea. I know that secure programs exist in China, and I know that some pay alright. Okay. Moving on.

On my 4 hours of sleep I managed to stay awake and almost as attentive as usual through my classes this morning. Both were a little lacking in attendance; our spring break is next week and a lot of people have left already to travel. I and three (at least... I really thought there were more) of the other kids going to Sichuan to teach English are getting on a train on Sunday afternoon. The train will take about 25 hours, and once we reach the Guangyuan train station we'll have a two hour bus ride to Bazhong.

My teaching partner, Yang Genbao, and I planned our lesson last night. We're following their textbook for the most part (involving learning to talk about doing homework and watching television, among other daily and riveting activities) but are playing Jeopardy the second day (we're only going to see each class twice) and leave the last 10 minutes of each class for them to ask us questions in Chinese. They will probably be pretty excited to meet Genbao since he's from so far away in China. I think I already said that I'll probably be the first foreigner these kids have met. It's blowing my mind a little.

I did my class shopping today, photocopying the textbook so we can give the original back to the other group teaching 7th grade, buying candy for prizes. This involved a lot of walking around outside and listening to music- one of my favorite things to do. I was lamenting the trouble I have been having meeting and connecting with people and thinking about how a foreigner in China really has to find a way to enjoy attention (reminding myself to be excited about all the opportunities to smile at people I have when everyone is staring at my white white skin), and then made a friend in the supermarket. He was working handing out samples of crackers and standing right by the bulk candy. I tried the sesame and the peanut varieties (芝麻 and 花生）and told him about my quest to buy candy for my students next week. He asked me where I was studying and how long I'd been in China and gave me advice about what treats to buy. He asked me for my QQ (chinese IM service) and I told him I don't have one, which is marginally true as I have one but have not figured out how to use it yet.... So I gave him my cell number.

This was not my being hit on. Being foreign in China, outside of the biggest/most "developed" cities makes you a celebrity of sorts. Lots of people are excited about having a foreign friend, and my speaking Chinese more and more comfortably has made it easier and easier for folks to talk to me. It's cool beans.

I was also excited to find soybean powder at the supermarket. There are fridges on each floor but I haven't found a convenient way to buy, story, and keep soymilk for my tea/coffee. Little packets of soy powder, however, are working just great. I also replenished my oatmeal supply and bought some dried seaweed.

I probably won't post until after Sichuan, so have a great week!

Title is from Colin Hay's "Overkill". I have also been listening to the Rent soundtrack a lot this week.