Start the day with the toilet overflowing. Mrs. Liu sends in two plumbers who fix it in a nano-second. What are they doing that I can’t seem to do? She also re-issues the key to 1702 if things get bad again. Mary somehow sleeps through all of the commotion.
Around 10, Mary and I head out to coal hill behind
We then head to Katie’s school and wait for her to finish at a nearby Starbucks. Katie is not in a good mood. They brought their exhibition project on endangered animals to a Chinese public school and apparently it did not go well. Her teammate Exilia did not show up at school, and one of the other 4 teammates was struck with stage fright, so Katie was left holding most of the bag. They did not have enough games for the students (they made 20 but class had 40 students). And the teacher that videotaped their performance was apparently very critical. From BISS we get into wicked traffic, and end up getting out of the taxi on the highway and walking to the Silk Market where Mary shows her prowess for shopping! We then go across the street to Lan for another incredible dinner of beggar’s chicken. We return to Renmin and Mary and I go out to the park across the street and watch a couple do Latin dancing, samba, maybe, alone with a boombox. Very sweet. We then resume our Scrabble game with Katie until nearly
Saturday, May 24
Katie’s teacher emails with concerns, vague, but clearly Katie’s performance at exhibition did not go well. She’ll need to stay after school next week to get it into shape before the final show in a few days. We take a cab all the way out to Gaobaidian and Mary and I are ready to buy furniture, but I am incapable of making a decision, Katie is bored and whiney, and we opt to not buy but come back tomorrow. I decide I’ll buy Katie the Nintendo DS she’s been bugging me about and that will occupy her if we have another “boring” day of shopping. We then head to the
Sunday, May 25
I get up early and read on line about plungers, snakes and other remedies for a plugged toilet. I try hot water, a bent coat hanger and then plunge and voila, it flushed! I am so proud of myself!!!
We had hired Lucy’s driver, Simon, to take us out to some areas near the airport. First we go to a private collection, called GuanFu, out in the middle of nowhere. It is FABULOUS! Sort of like the Chinese version of the
Monday, May 26
Tuesday, May 27
I have invited all my undergrads in to be interviewed. I want to include each of them in the blog and I am thinking this could be the start of a book: The Girls of Room 405. I will follow them after they graduate and follow their thinking over time. I ask about religion, politics, family, dreams, what they know about Tiananmen 1989, what they think of the Dalai lama,
Later, during class we talk about the pitfalls of Live coverage (earthquake was the first time CCTV went LIVE from a disaster zone). We then look at two stories about human cloning and have an interesting discussion about medical/science reporting which devolves into a discussion about the ethics of cloning – a few actually think it is a good idea! We also talk about forced abortion, late term abortion and they are OK with all of it. After class I call Mercy to see if she can have maintenance fix the electricity in my office, which has gone out. I also decide to write up a list of what would have made things better.
Here goes:
Things that would have made my experience here much better:
Department Contact: (not waiban)
1.Before Fulbrighter arrives, should have an email conversation with your department contact, not the waiban, about what the students have already learned and what courses would be most appealing to students and most useful to the department. Department should recruit students to take the course. I had only 3 grad and 5 undergrads taking it for credit…and about 20 others whose English was perfectly fine for auditing. Why didn’t more take it for credit?
2. Dept. contact should have a strong command of the English language. Mine was very nice and well-meaning but did not understand much of what I said and vice versa. Other faculty member’s English is much better. Why wasn’t she assigned to me?
3. Dept. contact should be a more senior faculty member who knows policies and procedures, not a first year professor who is learning herself. i.e. the calendar. When are classes cancelled, holidays, when do classes end, when are exams, etc. What are the workload expectations, what other courses are the kids taking? What are the resources available, cameras, studios, computers, etc.
4. Dept contact should arrange meetings with the Chair, the Dean and as many colleagues as possible for lunch, coffee, dinner. I met only 4 other faculty, once, and never again. Never met Chair or Dean.
From the waiban:
1. What to do in the event of an emergency, how would a Fulbrighter be contacted or made aware of evacuations from buildings, gas leaks, what to do in an earthquake or fire. How to find out when there are notices that electricity or internet will be shut off, etc.
2. A TOUR and map of the campus and a list of what is here – (Sue shared a draft of hers. It is a start, but incomplete.) It should add athletic facilities available to Fulbrighters, English language section of library, how to use and access the library, the cafeterias, etc. Where to find English language newspapers and periodicals. Tell them about Friday night English corner.
3. How to find out about events on campus (all notices are in Chinese, get someone to translate and communicate them via email to westerners on campus): (Hu Jintao came and went without me knowing) ---especially events in English or with music or art exhibits that don’t require Chinese proficiency
4. Have a reception (cookies and tea, nothing fancy) early each semester to try to create a community of ex-pats or former Fulbrighters or supply Fulbrighter with:
List of former Chinese Fulbrighters on campus with contact information
List of other non-Chinese, English speakers on campus
5. A list of area ATMs, grocery, convenience, pharmacy, office supply stores, restaurants, western, Chinese and others that are walking distance and a map in English and Chinese of how to get there.
6. Information on travel agencies or how to plan trips for guest lectures. (to avoid paying cash for tickets).
Homefront;
1. Directions to appliances in English: heat, air conditioner, hot plate, washing machine, hot water heater (so you don’t get scalded after cleaners adjust it to its hottest setting).
2. Have drinking water delivered and how to re-order it in the future
3. Arrange for an English speaking student to go grocery shopping with the Fulbrighter for the first few times to help reading labels (dishwashing liquid vs. fabric softener, cream rinse). And see if faculty could offer to go grocery shopping with a
4. See if faculty member with a car could take Fulbrighter on excursions inaccessible by public transportation, or provide a list of drivers in the area.
5. Information about north gate taxi entrance.
6. Information about cleaning service/laundry before you buy cleaning materials….
7. Who to call for maintenance, toilets flooding, leaks in windows after rain, noisy neighbors.
If you have kids:
Find some way to find and connect with kids on campus. They are here, just hidden.
After dinner we take a walk out to the East Gate, to get milk. The parks around the campus are full of young people lounging on the grass, older folks out walking dogs and babies in split pants toddling around. It is a perfect summer evening.
Wednesday, May 28
I finish draft one of book chapter and send it off. I then interview two more students for the blog/future book. Before class I meet with the three post-grads. One works for a Party legal daily newspaper. She says her senior editors (and the senior editors at 12 Party news outlets – Xinhua, CCTV, etc) have been having nightly meetings with the government Propaganda Department to discuss coverage of the earthquake. Usually, the censors just make a phone call to the editors saying what can be published and what can’t. It seems the earthquake is allowing greater discussion about what is OK. Until now, the coverage has been extensive and thorough, if a bit maudlin and at times schmaltzy. I am really disturbed by how many children are being interviewed and asked to re-live their trauma!
One story, about a group of angry parents marching in protest to
It was interesting to learn how the censor process works. But the postgrads said the propaganda department is not all bad. They say it also forces/encourages reporters to cover “good stuff” too, issues that might not get much coverage in a commercial enterprise, like the plight of farmers, elderly, etc. Some part of me wishes we could force news organizations in the west to do a lot less on Brittany Spears and Bradgelina and more on the plight of
In the grad class that day, I also learn that the earthquake LIVE coverage may not be so live. There is a “minute” delay (not sure if it is a whole minute) to still allow the censors to cut off a controversial remark, should one attempt to say such a think on LIVE TV here. We then discuss the ethics of undercover camera work and Chinese reality TV. A program similar to “American Idol” was cancelled, in part because people got to VOTE for the winner – and the government felt threatened by this mini-exercise in voting. One student thought it was cancelled because the host was rude. But many reality programs have been cancelled, one student thinks, because they have become too popular and the government was losing control of the content.
After class, Ann McConnell has managed to find Yuxin Ai, a Fletcher grad who we hosted while she was a student at Tufts. She now works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we will reconnect next weekend.
One of the things I will miss most about
Thursday, May 29
Peter Berger, a Boston University Professor who specializes on the Sociology of Religion, is a guest at Renmin, giving a lecture. Mercy tells me about it (finally getting word of some event on campus, even if its an American from my home university), so I decide to go to his lecture on Modernism and Religion. Modernity does not lead to a diminution in religious activity, according to Berger’s research. It is quite an interesting lecture, interrupted by the arduous consecutive translation. I’d like to get the text of the whole talk, not just the truncated version. I introduce myself to Berger at the end, offer to take his picture for the BU Today site, but he’s not interested.
After the talk I take a taxi to Torana carpets out by the airport and get hopelessly lost. We get off the highway at the right exit, but it is clear to me from the map that we have turned west, when we should be going east. I try to mime this to the driver, pointing the map and saying: dong bu xi, east not west. The driver stops to ask another cabbie which way to go and the cabbie tells him to keep going west…..and as he is saying this, he is giving me a sinister smirk, and continues to hang his gleeful head out the window of his cab as we drive on – clearly he knows he is steering us astray and helping a fellow driver to jack up the meter. I am a bit nervous, as we continue to drive to a less and less developed part of town and eventually the road turns to dirt and peters out altogether. Where the heck are we? We turn around and head back, east to the highway, and then continue in the direction I was trying to get us to in the first place. Eventually we get to Torana and I am bummed out. I was under the impression that there would be a large selection of rugs out here at their ‘warehouse” location, but there is not much here. The neighborhood is a lot of interior design style stores so I poke around and end up at Radiance, which Ann McConnell had told me about. Lots of lovely furniture, but nothing I want. Then I am told there is another Radiance, just a short cab ride away. I head there and hit the jackpot. Lots of gorgeous stuff and I do my part to help the Chinese economy, buying two pieces and a lot of other trinkets, nicer than I have seen in most markets. I will ship the furniture to the
From here I have a tough time hailing a cab, but eventually find a speed demon who gets me from Radiance to Katie’s school in about 20 minutes in
If every week here had been as full, as pleasant and as interesting as this one, I’d stay forever.
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