0

I had the pleasure of being invited as media to the US Women's National Volleyball Team friendly against Chinese professional club Evergrande while the U.S. Team was on a training trip to China. The event that brought in 9,000 Chinese fans was broadcast live on CCTV-5. Volleyball, Badminton, and Ping Pong players enjoy celebrity status. The events we reserve for picnics are Asian blood sports. So, when 2008 U.S. Olympic coach and Chinese Volleyball legend Lang Ping entered the stadium she received a welcome--the kind given in days before the tabloid disfiguring of sports luminaries--only given to the likes of ("Babe") Didrikson Zaharias, Joe DiMaggio, Ron Santos or Joe Louis.

My assistant, Li Hui Qing ("Charisette") and I stand 5'2" and 5'7" respectively, so our presence at the event made it look like a casting call for a  Chinese Gulliver's travels. But, despite all the shouting and stooping during the pre-game media dinner at the owner's five-star hotel, and all the courtesies afforded to the team and the press it was one of the most relaxed international caliber matches I have ever attended.The kudos go to Maggie Rausch, the strongest bi-lingual voice in journalism for professional sports in China, who organized the event's public relations.

 

One western publication, that I don't remember seeing at the tournament, wrote about the contest and criticized the behavior of the Chinese fans. They must have lost their way to Guangzhou Sports Gymnasium and wandered into another venue. The fans were orderly, enthusuastic and cheered for volleys prolonged by the US and Chinese teams. There was a lot more to cheer for on the Chinese side as the Americans lost all three games: 25-20, 25-14, 25-19 . No excuses need to be made for the Young American team though as they were battling a professional team with a 12-0 record and coached by 2008 U.S. Olympic Games Head Coach Lang ("Iron Hammer") Ping, who might just know a bit about our tactics, with players that included 2008 U.S. Olympic Games silver medalist Nicole Davis (Stockton, Calif.) and U.S. Women’s National Team middle blocker Christa Harmotto (Aliquippa, Pa.). Evergrande’s also boasted Feng Kun, Zhou Suhong and Yang Hao, gold medalists at the 2004 Olympic Games and bronze medals at the 2008 Olympic Games.

The post event news conference with Hugh McCutcheon looked like and sounded like he was delivering a eulogy rather than post match comments. He clearly thought the U.S. should have performed better. I believe the group of Olympic hopefuls (no returning Olympians were present on the American side) who comprised the squad certainly have the talent to repeat American Olympic glory (we won) after more time together as a team. Megan Hodge (Sadly, no relation) from Durham, N.C., was one of three players who joined the U.S. Women’s National Team only the week before the meet-up in Guangzhou. Hodge, who is headed back to college classes at Penn State as I write, ran up 15 points on the Chinese, all via kills and with an astonishing 41 percent conversion rate. She'll be a factor in any success we will have leading up to London.

 

Xu Jiayin, the richest man in China, invested 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) into Evergrande Women's Volleyball Club and with Lang Ping has fueled an even greater interest in the sport in China. He spared little expense to create an event I wish would have, despite the outcome, received more western press attention. The focus these days is on Google's possible exit from China, economic disparity, product deficiencies and human rights criticisms. Readers of my work articles know that while these are important issues I am a fan of engagement (and sports) and the oblique benefits that come when any country is spotlighted because of its involvement in international sports. We need a lot more Volleyball, Taekwondo, Boxing and Sports Diplomacy to give balance to our heavily skewed cultural views.

Congratulations to the Chinese team, Xu Jiayin, Lang Ping on their Grande season. And best wishes to Hugh and the U.S. team who will soon be a formidable opponents again in world volleyball play.

 

	2	1	Teaching, China, Waijiao, teaching in china, differnce between education in China and the west, students, Chinese education, college life, volunteers, educators, professors, foreign teachers,

“There are quantities of human faces, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.”

 Ranier Maria Rilke

 

I once substituted  as lecturer for a Classics course in a Chinese Ivy League school. The beloved Harvard educated Chinese professor could not teach that term because of medical issues.  I entered the classroom as an unknown entity. Students at the University were used to "Waijiao"  (Foreign Teachers or literally Outside Teachers) with little or no experience being put into their classrooms more for the color of their skin or country of origin than for the their knowledge of the subject to be taught. After a brief run through the ambitious syllabus foisted on me I asked the class if there were any questions. One young man in the back of the room angrily asked: "What qualifies you to teach at this institution?" His question neither offended nor surprised me.

I knew a little of the history of this class and their previous foreign faculty members: one, in his sixties, had recently been asked to resign as a result of relational improprieties and another, also in his sixties, was dating three different young women at once (unbeknownst to the others)  while living with another on campus. Neither teacher had a degree in English nor much of a cultural grasp of China beyond a singular fondness for young Chinese girls. Sadly, this breed of foreign expert had been the norm at that school for many years.

I calmly explained that I had been, before my travel to China, a "real teacher" with a real desire to see them come to love and understand literature as much as I had during my graduate education. I told them that my credentials, awards, and publishing credits more than qualified me for undergraduate lecturing. I stress that  during my program I was taught by mentors and visiting lecturers in my program who had won every award from the National Book award to the TS Elliot Prize to the Nobel, to...But academic window dressing would only have meaning if by the end of the term they had come, to paraphrase Rilke, to enjoy literature more and more, and became more and more grateful, and somehow better and simpler in vision, and deeper their faith in life, and happier and greater in the way they lived and were able to appreciate the power of the written word as it has influenced millions over the decades.

Richard, the young man above, was the class antagonist the entire term: He became my favorite student by way of his challenges and lust for knowledge and academic integrity in his learning. He will graduate from Columbia this year and he still intellectually wrestles with me when I post something questionable on Facebook or other social network where we remain connected.

Most new teachers in China will not have such good luck. They will not have vocal students (another post will discuss why they are silent and it is not for lack of opinion or ability) who will educate them about how they are perceived nor will they be lucky enough to teach top students much more than oral English idioms in a class better suited for elementary aged pupils.

Know this:

• You are a foreigner and many round eyes and white faces have preceded you. Some have done their job well, most have not.
• It is your responsibility to acculturate, not theirs.
• Learn your students Chinese names and something of their background.
• Be patient with yourself and your students.*
• Know that the students have already spoken, and likely written on school boards, about you. Ask them individually how to improve their learning experience. They will tell you though not always with the grace and tact you might like. Do not be surprised to be told, if you open yourself to feedback, that you are short, fat, old, wrinkled or speak too fast, slow, too much or too little to them.
• Know that the Chinese staff knows little or nothing about you and may not bother to take much time to engage you: you are a transient in their life of endless meetings, regulations, low pay, long hours and mandated curriculums. They may think you less prepared culturally and academically than their Chinese colleagues.

There are three exercises I use in almost every class to bring each student, and consequently China, into better focus:

• I take time away from regular studies to have each student write their name in Chinese on the board and describe each element and character in the name. I ask them to include the historical meaning of the name, who gave it to them and why. Att the same time I ask them not to use an English name in my class in order that I might learn their real names and the identities behind each one. This term, Purple Heart, Handsome Horse, Ms Poetry and Beautiful Phoenix are a few of the student names I will never ever forget--where I might not remember the faces or stories of Chloe, Vince or Sophie. And the stories behind the names have been worth a thousand Chinese culture classes as I have learned about Feng Shui from those whose names were chosen for luck by a soothsayer or master, enjoyed tales about entire villages with a common middle or last names, and shared in the hopes and dreams of parents who chose Chinese name characters hoping their meaning would influence the futures of their children by association or divine intervention. 
• I interview each student in many classes and ask them simple questions about the wishes, lies and dreams in their educational lives. I have come to know real people, not numbers, faces or acquired names. And the fear that once separated us has often dissolved and been replaced by lasting respect and I have been able to honor and stretch their boundaries. And they become as uncomfortable with the term Waijiao as I do because, while always an outsider, I am on the periphery with love and appreciation and a sincere desire to see them succeed:  “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other”
• The first ten minutes of any class is devoted to school, local, regional and national news. This keeps me informed about things I would never otherwise know, helps with language acquisition, and tells me culturally what is important to them and why. Politics and religion are forbidden discussion topics, but  feelings about sports, war, earthquakes, and even movies or television star scandals will inform about China you in ways you never dreamed possible. Students learn that I am not the America they condemn because of the reader-baiting bias of a CNN or other media source and I re-discover that they are not the perpetrators of the rules and ideologies by which the west defines China.
  

 

Becoming a teacher in China is more than lessons in language if you have respect, and most of all, patience:"... there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being a [ teacher] means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"

 

Part 2/8 in a series about teaching in China....

1	2	3	Teach, China

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”

Ranier Maria Rilke

 

This will be the first in a eight-part series. For those of you not interested in teaching in China I hope it serves as an informational piece on the differences between education and employment practices in China and the west.  It is in eight parts because the number eight is considered auspicious in China and I am not Stephen Covey. I would like this to become a "Letters to a New Foreign Teacher " guidebook, albeit I am no Rilke either.

Two schools told me, just a few days ago, that they hoped to increase their foreign teacher faculty by 100 percent in the next two years in an effort to internationalize their programs. They asked if I would help recruit qulaified teachers in a variety of disciplines to come to China and share their knowledge. And no, I am not being paid to assist. I am thankful for the great confidence placed in me and will do my best to give you a clear picture of what awaits you in the Middle Kingdom, both in the way of excitement and challenge. I love China and the students here, but it has taken me over half a decade to be able to comfortably discuss the culture differences and take a meta-view of all that is, to be euphemistic, foreign, about teaching here. There will be words, that to you may seem like criticism, but they are merely observations and truths as I have come to learn them. Take what I say with a small grain of salt: I wake up to new appreciations and frustrations every day and  the leanings of my western mind, even after 20 years in Asia, sometimes lead me into me into cultural and communication misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered.....

With this preface, I want to tell you that teaching in China will be one of the greatest learning experiences of your life if you allow yourself to be taught by those you have come here to mentor. Candidly, you have little to offer that Chinese teachers cannot. You should look forward to acculturating and adapting in such a way that you build trust so that meaningful dialogues allow you to develop relationships they can change your life forever. I will mix the practical with the esoteric. You will find many answers in the former and likely more questions via the latter: "Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." And I hope you do consider coming here. I will also list, at the end of each post, a contact email you may write to and express interest. I will then use it only once or twice to notify you when a new recruitment site, to be used by the most reputable colleges and universities in China, is online and able to accept resumes or job queries.

Basics:

Age Requirements

You should be at least 21 to teach on a regular contract and 18 if you hope to volunteer in a rural area for a short time. The government has started to enforce upper age limits and some schools may require you to be below 60 years of age. 

Schools in China prefer native speaking English teachers from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Great Britian. There are jobs available for non-native speakers but they are few and far between. Candidly, you have a better chance of teaching if you are a white anglo-saxon than if you are a person of color. Of all the countries in Asia, I find the Chinese to be the most curious and accepting of people from other countries.

Passports/Visas?

China requires that foreign teachers obtain a work visa in China. The school that hires you will assist you in acquiring this visa which is placed inside your country passport. It used to be that you could come here on a tourist visa and the school could have it converted in-country, but now you must exit to Hong Kong, Macau or elsewhere and have it processed there. It takes 2-3 days and the fees (sans accommodations) are generally paid by the school. Unless there is a legal reason that you are not allowed to leave your country, you should be able to obtain a passport in your country without too much hassle. A new center is being established in Guangzhou to assist schools in verifying your credentials and making sure you have no legal impediments to work. You may be required to pay a small fee to have your documents certified, but this will assure you have the ability to teach at better institutions.

Qualifications?

In the past, many schools in China have not required any degree to teach English. This has changed. You should have a bachelors degree and a TESL certificate or two tears of experience if you want to teach oral English. The best possible qualifications for a teaching candidate is to have at least a 4 year Bachelor’s Degree, TESOL/TEFL certificate, and some teaching experience or a MA or PhD in your field and two or more years of teaching experience. Most foreigners are assigned to oral English, basic writing skills and culture classes, but in cases where you have skills needed by a more internationalized school you will be assigned to classes in your discipline. You must always expect that you will be utilized to teach some form of oral English in addition to other duties as contact with native speakers is the primary goal.

Teachers with Disabilities

To say China is not as handicap accessible as developed countries would be euphemistic. There are few ramps and plenty of tripping and climbing hazards. Apartments and restaurants that would be required to have elevator access in your country probably do not have any in China. In addition, most people in China spend a lot of time walking from the train to a bus stop, or from a bus stop to their homes. Taxis are plentiful and cheap by western standards, but considered expensive by locals. If you do have a physical disability you should be up front with the school and see IF they can accommodate you. They are not mandated by law to do so.

Other medical Issues

Medical issues might disqualify you for work. Too, it is important to consider language barriers, and western style hospital access issues: China's medical system is good, but over-taxed by a demand for services. Some medications may not be in hospital formularies here. Check first. Certified western doctors, at private clinic catering to multi-national companies exist here, but are extremely expensive. If you take a rural assignment the conditions may be primitive at best and western medicine you are accustomed to may be hours away form your locale. Choose your assignments carefully and ask plenty of questions.

To be continued......

 

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1	4	1	Google, Leaving, China:, Bai, Bai!

If there were separate trending statistics for people with access by proxies server Twitter, the number one topic would be: "Google.cn."

I started my day on the net by reading Google's official blog and its calculated response to what they alleged was an attempt by the Chinese government to hack their servers and access the mailboxes of human rights activists. The one question that has nagged at me is: How did Google know the accounts being hacked were those of activists in the first place? I don't remember being asked my political leanings when I signed up for Gmail nor do I remember correctly answering security questions like: "Name the date of the T-Square massacre" in your country or, What is the name of your favorite Chinese Premier who died while under house arrest" And if you answer 1989 or Zhao, Ziyang respectively is your file put into a special cyber-vault reserved for dissidents? Hell, Yahoo! probably turned those over to the government long ago.

I was ebullient when I heard the news that Google was considering a pull-out because of China's intrusion. But, I had heard more than a month ago that Google China employees were quitting in large numbers because of a planned exit. Yesterday, there was no reference to a widely circulated circulated number of tweets (twitter messages) from friends of Google China employees that this move may have already been in the works. I mused, tongue firmly in cheek, that it took over a month for corporate legal beagles to agree on what to write and how to distribute it. I, like so many others, reeled over the news and reveled in the possibility of Google choosing principle over profit.

The rumors and speculation began immediately. And all of us who would rejoice in the fall of the Great Firewall began looking for chips and cracks in its facade. One person sent me a link to a image search result on Google China for "Tiananmen Square" where, sure enough, were pics of students the massacre, the Tank Man and more. I hastily re-tweeted the message and link, forgetting that my IP address, as that of the original sender, hailed from the U.S.. The results, when I turned off all bypass software, showed a freshly retouched Mao looking over harmonious throngs of visitors to the borrowed paradise that is Heaven's Square.

One of the world's leading authorities on Search Engines messaged me and schooled me on my error. I immediately deleted all references to the mistake and headed for a hospital appointment, hoping to return to more viable information. What I found when I came home was a snowdrift of messages from reporters, and fund managers. The former looking to profit from a scoop and the latter hoping to protect their bottom line. I knew/know what everyone else knows at this point: Google sent a trackback to the world and the world took the link bait and made "Google Leaving China" and "Illegal Flowers". The latter refers to the farewell bouquets that have been left at Google.cn headquarters honoring Google's courage. Illegal Flowers is  now online code for censorship and oppression being used by censor-weary bloggers and netizens in China. Not everyone who laid a wreath at the make-shift memorial was drenched in sympathy: Notice in the picture below that the note reads, "Bai Bai" an allusion to Google's chief competitor for online ad revenue, Baidu.

Pundits are supposing that Google is acting to save face and leave their moral fire-base with the last shot fired. Some, are looking for the rightness or reason for a decision to no longer kou tou (kowtow) to Beijing when the home team, Baidu, has received wrist slaps or exonerations for transgressions (Sanlu Milk, IP Theft...) while Google experienced blocks and service denials for allegedly providing link access to pornographic content. And other Chinaphiles have even gone back a couple of months in time and charged former Google.cn commander Kai-Fu Lee with mutiny for jumping from a ship he knew was headed for catastrophe. I say that Google just provided the anti-pyretic that broke our collective fever and woke us out of a sick sleep: We never know how ill we have been until we recover, if only a bit. The systematic closures of service and the tightening of Internet controls have been a slow growing constant that has infected the world and weakened resolves. I do not care to speculate this early on about why, or if, Google will leave China nor whether it will continue obeying the state by self-censoring search results. For now, I only hope that this break proves to be the beginning of the end of information mediocrity in China.

One of the best articles written in the last 24-hours is an early lament and supposes, as do some in-country proponents of freedom of expression, that Google's exit would only embolden a regime that seems afraid of nothing on its western front. And that sentiment was echoed by several Chinese friends today who worry that the void left by Google will be quickly filled with vapid, politically correct content in place of much needed information for the intellectual and social development of those who care about the same. They feel that, faster than the flowers die or can be removed from Google's front porch, the world will forget what happened yesterday and they fear that this row will vanish from virtual memory with T-Square and Zhao, Ziyang.

I have lived to see the rise and fall of Berlin Wall and Apartheid in South Africa; I hope I am around to witness the demise of the Great Firewall.

	0		crime, intellectual property, law, IP, IT, Internet, Film, IMBD, entertainment, IP theft, China, WTO

	3	3	Avatar, China, Movies, Linguistics, Films, Cinema, Culture, Censorship

Our common lexicon is often changed by movies, televison shows, advertising, and oral transmission in person or over digital, analog or snail mail networks. "Unfriend" was Oxford's word of the year for 2009 as it allegedly had, despite its psycholinguistic negativity, "lex-appeal" passed on by social medians around the world. "Believe it or Not," "Come on Down," "Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up," "Where's the Beef?,""Impossible is Nothing," and dozens of terms have planted themselves firmly in the center of conversation in scores of cultures world-wide even when users are barely able to remember origins.

Avatar has been panned by some critics as nothing more than a film with bright graphics illuminating predictable story lanes. And I have read blog posts asserting that all of its content will fade from our collective consciouness faster than it grossed its record breaking billion dollars in box office revenue. I am not so sure.

The curmudgeonly two-percenters among us, those dizzying intellectuals who can construct an intricate and convincing argument for just about anything negative, are often strangers to the ravishingly simple beauty of an oft told love story. Sure, the fates of Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliette, Cyrano and Roxane and Abélard and Heloise will long be retold as adapted by lesser princes of literature and music, but Bob Dylan once said that all the songs have been written and all stories already written. However, to put them into a contemporary idiom that speaks to modern hearts (in varied cultures) is worthy of praise, not derision.  Confucius said of these critics: "Men in old times studied to improve themselves; men study today to impress others." Hopefully we'll emotionally wake to the fact that an Avatar line like "I see you"--meaning I sense, feel and completely connect-- can appeal to the marvelously ordinary in everyday people and  may well wind itself into more than one exchange of affection. But, I digress....

There may be other reasons for thwarting the success of Avatar in China.

I saw Avatar last week in a packed Hong Kong theater, tickets to which were were as scarce as a tamed Lenopteryx. Mainland China authorities stalled its release beyond an already delayed debut. Subsequently, I heard rumors that the Radio and Television Ministry (SARFT) had deployed a strategy similar to one used during the National Day holiday to boost domestic ticket sales for the currently running Bodyguards and Assasains, a home-grown feature flick.  At that time, foreign films were nowhere to be found during the The Founding of a Republic, initially a box-office weakling, that went on to capture patriotic hearts, minds and a handsome gross. Avatar was reviewed ahead of its opening on the mainland by respected Chinese sites and generally given a bad grade by reviewers during the enforced break.

I am no conspiracy theorist - I look bad in aluminum hats - but, I cannot help but see, even in potentially false rumors regarding Avatar, evidence of a greater problem in China. During the last year China slowly and systematically re-lowered the Bamboo Curtain and took a look backward for guidance about its collective future. From karaoke bars to social networks the ability to electronically connect and "see" beyond China's borders has been progressively restricted and interactions shunted toward scrutiny. With bit torrent sites ceremoniously closed to posture for the WTO and antedeluvian western IP criticisms gave dubious credence to China's need to create more Internet restrictions to grow what Evgeny Morozov in The National calls cultural scarcity.

Morozov says, "For every Chinese blogger that the techno-utopians expect to fight their government via Twitter, there are a hundred others who feel content with the status quo." I don't agree. Facebook usage fell from 1 million users to 14,000 after it was blocked following the Uruqimi riots, but it wasn't ennui that caused it, rather China's Internet landlords upped the rent and effective proxy clients are not in the average netizen's budget. A huge number of people are mad as hell, but will have to wait a little longer to not take it anymore. They "see" the forces at work.... Theft will slow until the more aggressive of the culturally hungry find new ways around the existing virtual blockades. And the hundred others who felt content were too busy Tweeting about Tiger Woods to care about a freedom fail in the Middle Kingdom.

The one spot-on request by the WTO is that China allow more western entertainment into the country. But, they need to embrace a better model for distribution like Creative Commons along with reasonably affordable properties from which lawyer run entertainment companies expect to profit: DVDs sans extras, China specific releases, and more ad supported online availability would be a good start.....

Morozov is wrong when he asserts that "Citizens of modern authoritarian states face a choice between hedonism with stable prosperity (their status quo) and hedonism with unstable prosperity – the hedonism that may follow a tumultuous transition to democracy." People cannot object with voices without being taught a vocabulary with which they can dissent. Moreover, it is naive to think that they will defend what  they have never been allowed to see....

 

Update: Avatar, after a few days of quiet in the theaters, picked up steam via word of mouth advertising and looks to be the biggest things since, well, Transformers....

Some reactions by Chinese Netizens: AVATAR