Nobody fakes it like we do!

If you are a cynic one of the first things you might think of when someone mentions 'China', is 'being cheated' (this word is well known to all my chinese students), and 'fake stuff'. Lets examine this last one more closely.

China is the kingdom of fake goods. Someone once said to me, if it can be made, china can immitate it (cheaply!). Think of any electrical product or brand, and you can probably find another local chinese product that looks suspiciously similar in its design and logo. In fact, the only thing that's different will be it's capabilities, and the fact it will konk out well before the original product. Heck, theres even been past cases of fake (synthetic) eggs being made in china and shipped to hong kong! dodgy businessmen here will do anything to make a quick buck.
But even though most citizens can pick the immitation from the real thing (by looking at the ridiculously low price tag), they are still willing to buy the immitation. yes, chinese don't mind a bit of pantomine.

So anyway, getting to the point, my two american collegues and I were asked to take part in the foreign language department's annual variety concert. But you might be asking, what talent does alan possess? Well appart from being able to juggle 3 balls for short stints (thank you grade 8 PE class), and being one of the best english speakers amongst the present company, no concert director in their right mind would ever want to enlist my talents. but this is china, and the people here have a different idea of entertainment.

yep, we were asked to fake perform Rober Palmer's - Bad case of loving you.
Don't ask me why they chose this song, or why we were asked to do it. TIC baby. This Is China. Just accept it.

but then it gets a bit confusing, because some of us were faking it, while some of us weren't. Britton was given the drums, and as its a bit hard to fake playing real drums, he actually did try to play along to the music, half successfuly. Our singer, Deanna, was actually enlisted to sing for real, but because she had zero preparation for it, she ended up half lip syncing half singing. Weston and I were given the guitars, so we faked the whole thing.

Now I'm not sure if the students realized we were faking it, but the organizers were going to great lengths to ensure we looked as legit as possible. We were happy to make it clear we were faking it, to make it more of a joke performance, and also because we didn't wanna come across as being frauds. But the organizers insisted we do things such as plug our electric guitars into amplifiers. Though comically, Weston's cable fell out mid-performance and he had to plug himself back in while the music continued!

I guess if one never heard the original song before theres a chance they might think it's real. but the fact there's robert palmers voice booming over the speakers but no guy singing on stage would surely give it away.

They did this at another performance i watched a few weeks back, and this one was actually being broadcasted on state television. At the end of this other concert, the whole ensemble of performers came back on stage and lip synced 'We are the world' while waving their hands in the air! Seriously, if you are going to fake a song, at least pick one thats a bit more obscure than this one! Not only is it a classic, but even most chinese people would surely be able to recognize the voices of michael jackson, lionel richie, ray charles and cyndi lauper!

anyway, coming back to our performance, the 3 of us teachers were just feeling real awful while waiting for our turn, watching the other performances by students who actually did have talent. But after it was all done the audience still went nuts and loved us. I guess our students in the audience just really enjoyed seeing us up on stage letting lose and pantomining! And it was a lot of fun too, though i must say it's one of the weirdest things I've ever done.

After the performance we were asked a few pre-prepared questions by the hosts. Just simple stuff like what do you think of nanjing, what were you first impressions, ect. bit of PR.
In all, a very strange but fun experience. I still feel like a bit of a fraud though, so perhaps i'll pick up my guitar again when i get back to australia.

Why some students don't care about exams

Now that we've arrived at the business end of the semester, it's time to give the dreaded exams. as like every other aspect about the subjects i teach, i have been given no guidance on how to set my exams. Pretty much it's up to me how i want to assess the students. Actually the only thing admin do ask of me is to let all my students pass (eventually).

This to me has probably been the hardest thing to swallow, since I'm a firm believer in fairness and credit for hard work. I already knew beforehand that things are done differently in Chinese universities, especially the less reknowned ones, compared to western institutions. As with everything else here in china, money and connections are the bottom line, and it's not like i could fight against the system, especially since the final grade can easily be changed by someone above me. But the most i can hope to effect is to give the poorly performing students a bit of a scare, to re-invigorate their study habbits, before eventually, and reluctantly, letting them pass the amazingly easy supplementary exam.

Before I go on I have to explain the system of many universities here in China. My uni is actually made up of two different sub campuses. The two campuses are within the same grounds but are located at different ends. Everything about the two are seperated - teaching facilities, dorms, cafeterias. The only thing they share are the teaching staff, library and admin. Although there are no physical fences or barriers to seperate the two cohorts of students, each cohort tends to stick to itself and it's own side.

Now the difference between the two campuses is that one is for the top performing students in the gao kao (the college entrance exam done at the end of high school), while the other campus is for the lower performing students. all chinese students receive a scale grading from their gao kao exam, ben yi (the highest), ben er, ben san (the lowest). so ben yi kids go to one of our campuses, while ben san kids go to the other campus. Why allow some of the lower performing kids to come to your uni? money of course. a former students has told me that the ben san kids pay 3 times as much in tuition fees as the other campus. So you can think of them as cash cows. Anyway, the reason i'm explaining this is that after giving the same oral exam to both my ben yi classes and ben san classes, you notice not just a clear difference in ability, but also in study attitudes and work ethic. You do have some ben san students who are really concientious and have good ability, but unfortunately on the whole, the ben san class skill level is much lower, and more disturbingly, they just don't seem to care about study.

But you might be thinking, don't these kids care about passing their exams? Even i thought that most of them would perk up when i mentioned the E word, like the students in my ben yi classes did, but unfortunately thats not the case. the only way i can explain it is that these kids know they are guranteed to pass, since their parents are paying a lot of money to the university. Fair enough. So i've tried to use the tact of explaining that graduating is not enough, and that without the skill and aptitude they still won't be able to get jobs in the highly competitive chinese job market. nope, still doesn't raise an eyelid. and i think it's because most of these kids have rich parents, rich parents with connections who can land them jobs regardless of their skill or abilities. that, or these kids are just plain spoilt and short sighted. I mean seriously, I never knew i'd meet chinese students this plain lazy and apathetic when it came to exams. i can't ration their attitude any other way. i certainly hope their parents have damn good connections, because for a bunch of english 2nd year majors (who have probably been studying english for 10 years), they can barely understand or hold a conversation above the sophistication level of a 5 year old.

So as it stands at the moment, one of my ben san classes should see half of the class fail. But because of the scheduling of the supplementary exams and the sheer number of failing students I would have, logistically i wouldn't be able to do supp exams for all of these students. I will probably have to re-scale my marking criteria down so that only the worst of the worst students are forced to sit the supp. I would like to scare the shit out of all of the poor (and invariably lazy) students, but unfortunately i just can't. Hopefully they'll remember the reason why they're in uni themselves next semester. At this rate they have bucklys chance of landing a job without using connections.

mmmm so tasty but so deadly?

I still can't get over how cheap food is here, especially eating out. A decent meal, with rice, meat and vegies will only cost you about 10 yuan at the most for something fancy, and if you wanted just fried noodles or rice, the least you can pay is 5 yuan (around 80 cents). compare that to cheapest meal you can find in australia, a meat pie for $4.50? and you're laughing. Even with my low wages (by western standards) at about 166 yuan a day, food accounts for but a fraction of my daily spendings.

However, after being here for 3 months and talking to a lot of the locals, the issue of food safety starts to play on your mind. To me, chinese food is so flavoursome, but sometimes a little TOO flavoursome. i.e. too much MSG or monosodium glutamate.

I can't expressly remember everything about MSG without doing a google search, but I do know too much of the stuff in excess is not good for you. what was it, some type of cancer, gall stones, heart problems? all i know is it's not good. and you're always drinking buckets of water after a meal in a restaurant.

unlike in the west, you won't find menus proudly advertising 'we don't use msg here'. nope, if a menu in china had that plastered on the cover, first of all the chinese patron would ask 'what's that'? , and then they'd walk out after tasting the dishes.

but it's not just msg that seems to be in excess. every fried dish absolutely swims in oil, and sometime they throw in a large chunk of lard just to flavour it up. The sichuan dishes are especially, bad with their copious amount of chilli oil. but, it wouldn't taste sichuan without all that oily goodness.

they don't go lightly on the salt or sugar in many dishes either. so when you are confronted with a menu board in china, you do sometimes have to think to yourself what do i want today? an increased risk of cancer, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes? take your pick. but whatever you choose, damn it'll taste so good. I also sometimes wonder what the effect of national diet are on the population. It seems that everyone here in China (especially the students), are always so sleepy. I have this theory that someting in their diets (the msg?), or the lack of (like coffee or diary?), must cuase the chronic sleepiness.

Then theres the issue of where the prime produce is sourced from. Now I'm not sure how credible the following i'm about to tell you is, or whether its stuff reported in the mainstream media or on social networking sites like weibo (the chinese version of twitter). So take the following information with a pinch of salt. (i mean, i'm not thoroughly convinced either).
One of my students adamantly warned me to never eat at the meat skewer places along the roadside. She reckons the 'lamb' meat, is actually dog, cat, or rodent, or whatever mixture they come up with on a given day. I've had my fair share of lamb skwerers already, and no signs of trouble yet. It tastes a bit rubbery, but hey, no less than the stuff you get from doner kebabs. So i'm not sold on that one yet. Besides, you probably face more danger from all the dirt and brake dust coating the meat as the cars whoosh by.

Then she up'ed the conspiracy theory level, and told me to never eat in restaurants around the campus. First of all, she just said they frequently re-use the same batch of oil to cook stuff. Fine, i could live with that. But then she told me stories of some oil suppliers sourcing their oil from dead human bodies! Again, i wasn't really sold on that one, and I didn't believe you could get much oil out of a dead body. Another one i heard from one of the other teachers was that some people collect sewerage water and chemically extract the oil out for re-use and sale. That one seemed a bit more plausible to me. Although i don't believe all these stories, I do believe that the worse of the worse Chinese business men (or women) are capable of doing such things. I mean, if some people in this country are capable of fatally poisoning babies with baby formula, then this ain't a far stretch. anything to cut costs and make a lot of money. an unfortunate ugly side of chinese society.

I also know for a fact that many farmers and agricultrual companies use excessive and dangrerous fertilizers on their fresh produce here. It's common knowledge amongst the people. I've been told by some locals to never things like lettuce or tomatoes raw. The other thing that might make you squirm is that some farmers use 'human fertilizer' on their produce. Notice the well trodden pathway in this picture from outhouse to crops! So just make sure you thoroughly wash your fruits and vegies when you bring them home.


Finally, i've learned to never buy cheap snacks from the grocery stores. many a time i've ventured into the realm of fake looking oreos, or half price cream biscuits, and have ended up bitterly disappointed. but it's not just quality thats compromised, as i found out after trying out a cheap chocolate coated muffin. You know how chocolate is supposed to melt in your mouth after a few minutes? well long after the muffin part had disintegrated, the chocolate coating was disturbingly still present in my mouth. it ended up forming something like a piece of plastic gum, which i had to spit out. So now whenever i pick up an ultra cheap product in the shops, my health and long term survival do flash through my mind. I now end up putting it back and reaching for the oreos.

Foreign language drama comp

The foreign language department organizes a plethora of activities for the students to showcase their language skills. First there was the speech comp, and now we have the drama comp.

As before, foreign teachers like myself are asked to participate as judges. For the drama comp i judged the semi final and final, but in the final most of the performances were the same ones i saw in the semis. they seem to run the preliminary rounds like Idol, where each round only 2 out of the 10 or so acts get knocked out!

Now the normal chinese citizen is not known for their acting or drama skills, let alone drama in a second language. Most students tend to focus more on academic subjects rather than artistic ones, and you could fairly say that the conservative character of chinese people doesn't make for a dramatic performance! I know that whenever I ask my students to do a roleplay in class, most of them rote read from a piece of paper in an inaudible voice like a robot, and usually don't even face the audience. They will avoid public speaking like the plague.

At least the drama performances in the comp were a bit more dramatic compared to my usual class fare. It wasn't exactly academy award winning stuff, but seeing it was in their second language it was still a good effort. They had their hearts in it, but they were definitely still sounding very chinglish with their lines. Unfortunately the poor organization of the event let down some of the performances when it came to sound equipment and props. It all seemed a bit disorganized when a stage hand would fly in and out, sometimes during scenes to grab props or put them in position! and there seemed to be a constant problem with microphones, or a shortage of enough to go around between the onstage actors!

Most of the performances were in english, with about 3 in japanese. fortunately for the final they invited 2 of the japanese teachers to come judge. in the semi final it was just me and another english teacher trying to score japanese dramas which we couldn't understand a word of! we just ended up scoring based on all the other aspects apart from the script. but hell if i knew they were pronouncing the japanese correctly or not!

Most of the english dramas were modern english translations of old chinese love stories. Although the english was a bit stilted, the costumes were quite impressive. And it wouldn't be a drama without a fight scene, so there were a few slow-mo fist fights thrown in for a bit of action.
A few of the dramas also incorporated random outbreaks of dancing and singing (which had nothing to do with the storyline at all ) while one of the love stories ended with a modern chinese love song duet by the two leads. I guess if the drama sucked, they could lean on the dancing and singing.

There was a moment of confusion though when a bunch of cos-play characters came up on stage and started to have mock fights. I was told by the chinese english teacher that this was a performance, so I was trying to score this performance that had no dialogue whatsoever. fortunately one of the other teachers pulled me up before i could hand in my score! Yeah these cos-play affecionados still weird me out. They had a few mock battles with their plastic swords before playing out some gay dance scene for a few cheap laughs. They ended off the performance by throwing out soft toys into the audience. I'm guessing they were cosplay toys.