China loves Steve Jobs & Chinese soul searching

Today the second round of the english speaking contest was held for the students who'd made it through last week. At least this time there were only 9 speeches, so it didn't take too long at all. Unfortunately, the topics were still the cliche ones you hear all the time, and again the theme of the speech was ''a word that has changed the world''. So again i heard Steve Jobs being praised over and over again by the speakers, and connected with various topics ranging from innovation, to dreams, to imagination. There was also a repeat of a speech given by another student from last week about three apples that have changed the world - the first being the apple of adam and eve from the bible, the second being the one that fell on Isaac Newton's head from a tree, and the third, well you can guess what that was.....

Obviously that speech had been lifted off somewhere else, and one of the other speeches sounded suspiciously too good in terms of their expression, spelling and grammar. Though, all four of us judges eventually chose that one as one of the two to go through to the next round since it was delivered so well. Being the second round of competition, there were fewer errors this time, and all the speakers were loud and clear enough for us to comprehend. There were still some long and awkward silences though while students tried to recall their lines, and the majority of answers given to our questions didn't address the question at all or they went off on a complete tangent.

but coming back to Steve Jobs, I don't know what it is with Chinese (or all asians), but they just all seem to worship the man like a god. I mean, yeah he changed the way we consume media, but he didn't radically change my life personally. I just touch my screen more now than press my buttons or mouse. Maybe it's cuz asian people are so much more attached to their technological devices vs western people? When i read all my student essays, one of the most common past times was surfing the web. Students either love sleeping, surfing the web, surfing the web for shopping, or playing computer games. I only read one art form being listed twice, and that was dancing.

Out of the 9 speeches we heard, two were going to be about China, and how great and perfect it was Ra Ra Ra, a speech I'd heard at least twice last week. However, after seeing the video footage for the first time of that little 2 year old chinese girl Wang Yue being hit by two cars and not aided by 18 passerbys, I wasn't in the mood to hear some glorified speech about how China and it's society was perfect and peachy. So I decided to ask a question about what bad effects she could identify from China's rapid economic growth. I wanted to see if she would talk about morals and ethics in China (because this incident has been reported here in china and has shocked the people), but she ended up talking about pollution instead.
I didn't consider this as overstepping the line since i was indirectly critiquing the society, and not the government. Indeed, even the local and federal governments here have been deeply reflecting on this incident and have vowed to take action to cure this malaise in morals and ethics.

The news reports have explained why people in general don't help out injured strangers in the street, and it's not because they are simply inhumane. those 18 people didn't stop to help the little girl after the famous case of an unscrupulous old lady successfully sueing a good samaritan who tried to help her. The woman had fallen down and the good samaritan had been kind enough to take her to hospital, only to later have this old woman turn around and accuse him of pushing her down! In the end the judge (from nanjing unfortunately), ruled that the good samaritan must have been guilty, since only the guilty would have helped a victim out!! The man was later ordered to pay for all her medical expenses.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/only-the-guilty-help-the-injured-legacy-of-the-nanjing-judge-all-too-apparent-as-passersby-ignore-hitrun-toddler-20111019-1m6sv.html

Now i can understand that reasoning, and that people are scared of being wrongfuly sued, but my god it's a bleeding two year old girl! Chinese citizens are so weary and distrustful of strangers that it has now come to this.

But from my experiences with Chinese people, they are some of the most friendliest and warmest of people to their friends and familes. It's just strangers that they seem to hold with little regard.

Some people and commentators are now looking at the broader issues of how it's come this, namely the obsessive pursuit of money and wealth. There was even some other Chinese citizen who tried to cash in on this tragedy and become famous, by playing a hoax and claiming first to be a driver, and then one of the bystanders who later helped out!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/hit-and-run-hoaxer-wanted-to-become-famous-from-chinese-toddler-tragedy/story-e6frf7jx-1226176509442

really sickening stuff. Anyway, like i said, theres been a national outcry from the people and media here, and governments are lookng at measures to address the problem, like introducing ethics and morals education into schools. One of the shorter term fixes they've been toying with is to introduce fines for not helping citizens in need. It's something a government shouldn't have to do, but unfortunately to influence the chinese people's behaviour its going to have to come back to money again. It's so sad. I really hope the mentality changes over the next few decades.

English competitions --> dreams, innovation and er...dreams

English speaking competitions seem to be a regular occurance here on campus in China. The foreign teachers are always asked to be judges at these things, so i've already received two invitations for two different comps. The first one I had to cancel on cuz I had to sort out some visa issues, but the second one i managed to get along to today.

Like most things in China, organization seemed to be severely lacking! It seemed that everything was being made up on the fly or at the very last minute, and even then things were still being changed at the last minute. For example we were sent two sample videos of speaches and told the students were all going to reproduce these on stage. We were to prepare 5 questions based on the speach. In the end though, most of the students came along with their own speach prepared. It was also unclear whether we were to prepare questions purely based on testing their memory of the speach, or to test their wider understanding of the issue. All this of course was clarified 10 minutes before the start. We were also not given anything except a small slip of paper with the assessment criteria and their name, shortly before each speach.

Between the four of us foreign teachers we were originally assigned about 50 students each. That caused a bit of confusion, seeing we only had two hours and the speaches we were originally shown went for at least 4 minutes each. When quizzed about this, the admin's response was ''oh don't worry, each student will only speak for 1-2 minutes before being stopped''.
What?! So they're only delivering half the speach, and we've based some of our 5 questions on content in the later half of the speach. Whats the deal?

Fortunately though only about 26 students in total turned up. I guess alot of them got cold feet. I don't know how i would've handled sitting through 50 students listening to one of two possible speaches over and over again though. In response to that, the Chinese co-teachers who would be judging with us stressed that if we thought a speaker was no good, we could simply cut them off mid speach and send them packing. Like having some sort of big gong to stop the speach, hey hey it's saturday, red faces style. It seemed that that was a completely acceptable thing to do here in China, but the four of us westerners couldn't bring ourselves to do that.

But like i mentioned before, most of the students came prepared with their own speaches. Not like there was that much variety though. The theme they had based their

speach on was ' a word that has changed the world'. Between the 13 students Mike (the other foreign teacher) and I assessed, we heard at least three speaches on innovation, two speaches on dreams, and two on the strong influence of Chinese culture. I swear at least two of the innovation speaches were copied from a common source.

Seeing as this was a preliminary compeitition, the performances were not expected to be dazzling, but the standard was probably much lower than what I was expecting. In some cases, much, much lower. To the extent where I was struggling to even understand a word some were saying. For those speaches I was leaning over, hanging off every utterance coming out of their mouths, hoping to catch a keyword to give me a clue as to what exact topic they were talking about. All of this while smiling and nodding to the speaker like I knew exactly what he/she was on about. Although we weren't obliged to ask questions after every speach, I did feel there was a need to test their understanding of the topic and to be consistent with all the students. Half the time though, the response wouldn't directly answer my question, and in some cases the students would go off on a complete tangent and reiterate a point.

It was also pretty damn hard to come up with questions for some broad topics like 'love'. That one had me stumped, while Mike just asked the speaker how he could display his love/affection for a Chinese student (i assume in a non-kinky way). Mike, being a bit of a cynical bastard, also decided to drop a bombshell in the room and casually ask one of the students for her opinion on the Chinese governments censorship of the internet, after she'd given a speach on innovation. I really don't know if mike was just being a dumb shit, or if he was testing the waters, but at that point i could see the two other chinese co-teachers tense up before burying my own face into the desk. I thought to myself, now theres a quick deportation ticket back to oz.... Fortunately, either the student was either very wiley, or didn't understand the question at all, and just gave some very vague answer saying the government needs to tighten restrictions.....and exhale.

You could tell most of the students were pretty damn nervous, and i couldn't blame them. Even though some of them had pretty low levels of english (i know because some of them were from my classes), they still threw themselves into the competition. Surely they knew they wouldn't have a chance in hell to get through, so i think it was more for the experience. Good on em I say. So open expressions of being nervous, forgetting lines, prolonged pauses, restarts, and speed reciting were the norm. There was not much expression(facial or body), intonation or stress (something chinese find difficult to grasp), or eye contact either, and attire of suits and nice dresses seemed to be abandoned for shirts, tracky dacks and tracksuits. I didn't have the heart to write down scores like 2/20 for pronounciation or other marks on that scale, but at least I consistently gave higher marks to everyone. It was more like 10/20. And I had to keep reminding myself that my expectations and standards were probably set too high at this stage of competitions. Anyway, Mike and I did earmark two speakers who were the best of the lot, but at this stage probably not national winning material, or even province winning. But, who knows, with a bit of training and work they may go a long way.

Don't mess with the freshmen

It's mandatory for all freshmen here in china to undergo three weeks of military training before they start classes. Actually, I've been told that even throughout high school students had to do military training every now and then. However, the three weeks they received at the beginning of uni would be the longest and last stint required of them.

I don't exactly know the purpose for all of it, but I can safely say 3 weeks is not enough time to make a lean mean killing machine out of anyone, especially for a bunch of girls who don't even come up to my neck line. So you can be rest assured we aren't about to be invaded by millions of midget soldiers sporting horn rimmed glasses. No, i think it's more got to do with instilling values such as discipline and obedience in them. I was going to type 'co-operation', something which most of them probably lack as they mostly come from single child homes, but then i can't remember see them practicing any sort of co-op activities.

So from weeks 3 to 5 of the semester, all basketball courts, sporting fields, and even some side roads in the campus are all commandeered by the freshmen soldiers and their trainers. (I'm not sure if the trainers chose this as their specialty in the armed forces, or if this is some sort of cruel punishment after being court-marshalled!)

Every time I have walked past one of these sights I have been greeted with one of several sights.

1) Everyone standing very still in their formations
2) Everyone kneeling very still in their formations
3) Marching around shouting 1.....2.......3.......4 after their trainers (in chinese)




and the military training times coincide with the class period times, so I guess these could be considered as subjects - Standing101, Kneeling101, and Marching101. haha

towards the end of their training stint they get taught some sort of self defence manouvers, and I also heard they get firearms training, off campus of course. Apparently not all uni's get this, and it's the first time it's been introduced this year. It's somewhat disconcerting to know that if i teach some of these 5 foot girls next semester they all know how to headshot me, or where to aim to cause maximum writhing pain. Or if I was to try and flunk one I'd wake up to find a gun barrel in my mouth. Lovely.

I also find it ironic that while america has a phenomenon of high school and college shootings, china is teaching its students how to maximize kill rates.

I must admit that after 3 weeks of training they do look impressive as an organized unit, marching in unison and shouting to 4 in unison. I can even hear it from my dorm room far away. After training is dismissed each day though you then see the young boys and girls limping and straggling back to their dorms, reliefs unzipped trying to cool down. it's quite a contrast!

At the end of the 3 weeks they also have a sort of parade, with a welcome and congratulation speach from the military brass and dean of the school. Not like one of those proper parades though, with nuclear missiles and tanks filling past the VIP stand. I managed to catch the last few moments of one. Everyone threw up their hats after the speaches were done, like it was graduation.....errrm, except they hadn't even started classes yet!

Meet the typical chinese student - Part 2

So we've just finished the 5th week of teaching and not much has changed with my students. They're still unable to raise their arms above 10 degrees from their sides when i ask a question, and I'm still talking to myself and answering my own questions in class. Thats right, in 5 weeks i have never had a hand raised to answer a question, even an easy question that they all know the answer to! Sometimes i wonder where all the future leaders and managers of china's government and private sector are. did they end up going to other schools? I wonder if i speak more mandarin to them if they'll be alot less shy! i mean, surely i'm not that scarey and intimidating. i smile to them as much as i can in class, and laugh at my own lame jokes. what do i have to do to make them open up? start acting more motherly?

and when i do choose a random student to answer the question there is the danger that they will have no answer whatsoever after standing up (because they always stand to answer questions), or give an answer that is completely unrelated to the question. you see, chinese students are incapable of saying "sorry i don't know'' , which i would've been completely cool with. so one must learn the art of 'guiding' the student to the answer, giving them hints or blatantly pointing to the answer in the textbook. and if they still don't get it, i'll usually say ''that's an excelent answer............if i was asking another question'' or ''you're close, but ......'', just to try and save their face. theres been a few times when my attempts at trying to save their face have failed when they've gone off on a complete tangent, and they just crumple into a heap after i ask them to sit down (because usually they won't sit down until you've asked them to).

some classes are easier than others. i've got 6 classes in total - 4 speaking and 2 writing. the speaking classes are alot of fun, while the writing classes have been a bit dry. it also depends on what time the classes are scheduled. i've found the morning classes are most attentive, while the 130pm after lunch class and the 320pm final class of the day are the least attentive, to the point where they are sleeping in front of you while speaking. The picture to the left was taken during the 10 minute break between periods. so the dozing is not this blatant during the lesson.

i've learned alot more about chinese students from the activites i've set for them in class. when i asked them to write some things about themselves, they seemed to come up with the same sort of responses - i can or can't swim, i have cats, i have dogs, ect. but i think it's more the fact that their vocab is quite limited, something i hope to help them with. its funny though when you assume they'll understand a word or concept but later find out they haven't a clue. I had to explain what a 'tan ', sunbathing, and sun lotions was! though i shouldn't be suprised seeing asian women desire white skin. i feel like telling them it's no good for their vitamin d and bone density though.

and some of them choose the strangest english names, often on purpose because they want a unique and memorable name. i think many of them end up changing their names if they study in a western country after quickly realizing how badly westerners get confused with their obscure names. Some of the more stanger ones include Jelly, Crane, Pirate, Druid, Purmaple, Sophila, Damny, Geraints, Iverson, Judyea, Echo, Jerusha, Sapphire, Green, Carrie (i know where that one came from), noyebuster, sunshine, tip, c.jiro (korean pop/drama star?), winner, jannten, j.raw (sounds like a file extension type), ariel, alian. So you can see some of them name themselves after characters in western tv shows and movies, NBA players for boys, computer game characters, scientific names of flowers, or they just randomly spliced two words and stuck the parts together.

Some of the more normal sounding names very popular among my students include daisy, sherry, cherry, jane, amy, fiona, joyce, coral. And then of course many of the names sound similar to their names in chinese. i know Winner came from wen na, so i didn't think she was trying to be cocky.

Although my writing classes have been pretty dry to teach, I did get some fascinating insights into their characters after asking them to write descriptive essays of themselves in the first lesson. After seeing how shy and reserved my speaking classes were, it was a shock to discover how expressive they were when it came to writing. I mean, the vocab and grammar wasn't there, but i still understood what they were trying to express, and they really did want to express themselves. I guess it's because they know their writing is only for me to read, comapred to speaking in class where everyone hears you. I mean, chinese people, (including westenrnized asians), are not known for expressiveness and openness. but most of them wrote about their strong love for their familes, hometown and friends. many also expressed a desire and regret over not having a sibling (due to the one child policy), and then opennly acknowledged how their parents had laboured hard and sacrificed everything for their futures. 99% of them described themselves as 'shy', and homely sort of people, but explaining that once familiar with someone they can be 'crazy' (outgoing and more talkative). most of them just liked music, movies, surfing the web, shopping, and also described sleep as a hobby! i think it's in the genes, because i can't get enough of it either. most of them were quite circumspect, acknowledging themselves as lazy and vowing they needed to change rectify this, and many of them had dreams to travel outside of china, more often than not to eat the delicious food of other countries! by the way i had to teach them to start writing 'good food', rather than 'delicious food'. one of my students wrote a bit of a disturbing essay though, saying she was so depressed and lost and just wanted to go somewhere far away from here. not sure if i need to sit her down and talk to her, or whether theres a student counseling service i can refer her to. i doubt the later though. it's not fun though, proofreading 135 essays a week, so i'll probably get my writing classes to submit work every 2 weeks rather than every week!