Celebrity white status

If you're white and come to china, be prepared to receive a lot of attention, especially outside the bigger cities. Theres an evolution that all caucasians go through. At first when they arrive, the concept of being gorked at and asked to be taken pictures with is novel. However after a few weeks this quickly gives way to annoyance and frustration. Not to mention the random shouts of 'hello!' (often in a mocking tone) from passersby. It's not so different from white people shouting out 'ni hao' to asian people back in the west.

You sometimes also get the random eager-beaver strangers who come up to you and just strike up a converstaion. 'hi, are you from america? I have an english exam in a few weeks time. let's practice english together. what's your phone number?' and then if you're not firm enough you'll be politely responding with vague answers all the while trying to leave the scene or shake them off your tail. believe me, i've seen this happen a few times already to my white friends.

Being caucasian also affords you a bit more consideration from the locals. From my observations, if you're white they're less likely to cut in line in front of you, and give you wider berth in crowded spaces like buses. I've lost count of the number of times i've wished i was white while sardined up in the bus, six to eight ass-cheeks rubbing agasinst me. (They really don't understand the concept of 'Maximum safe capacity' in China) I'm really starting to lose my patience with the queue jumping though, especially at check outs. next time someone blatantly tries it, i'm considering unleashing a torrent of profanities in the strongest Aussie accent i can muster, then ask them in chinese if they ever went to school.

So theres good things and bad things about being white in China. But on the opportunities side, its definitely a plus. For starters, every time i go out to a club with my white friends we'll almost always be shouted drinks and cigarettes by some rich chinese guy or the club owner, just because they want to have white people around them or in their establishment. They feel it boosts their credentials or profile of the club.

Then theres the odd jobs and modelling gigs. Weston was paid 3000 yuan to put on a santa suit and walk around a shopping mall handing out candy to kiddies. that was for about 9 hours of work, spaced out over 3 weekends. The only thing about Weston that's santa-like is his height. he's hardly fat or jolly, and at 24 is the fittest santa around.

And due to the relatively small population of white people in Nanjing, you're considered as model material as long as you're white. We have seen some somewhat questionable looking models (i.e. shockingly ugly white folk), in some advertisements plastered around the shopping malls and public spaces (see attached photos). I don't mean to be harsh but let me tell you, these people would not be able to get a modelling gig to save their lives if they went back to the west.

Britton was approached by a modelling studio rep in a club the other night, so his face might soon be plastered across a few billboards or coming to a restaurant near us soon. It's ironic becuase we're always making jokes of the shockingly ugly white models in ads. LOL. so i guess it hasn't boosted his ego much. I'm just going to warn him not to let the agency take random shots of him. i.e. do job specific shoots, rather than generic stock footage to be used for whatever purposes later. One doesn't want their close up downer portrait to be later used for say a genital herpes or male premature ejaculation ad.

Maybe I'll accompany him when he goes for his shoot. I'm always being told i look korean, and since all the chinese girls love the korean dramas maybe i can get a gig as a fake-korean model :)

The strange university clubs in China and membership funds abuse?

So I've now attended two uni club recruitment days, and I can tell you the clubs you get in universities here in china is much different compared to those in the west.

For one thing it's safe to say won't see any political or religious clubs, for obvious reasons. And if you tried to set one up, i'm sure you'd be promptly shut down. (and maybe taken away for questioning).

There are also no 'socializing, or clubbing/drinking' type clubs either. Some students do drink, but they usually do it just among friends in a restaurant private room or in their own dorms. Most don't drink at all though since many of them are not interested or can't afford it.

They do have sporting clubs, though obviously the sports they play are a bit different - the badminton and pingpong clubs seems to be the most popular, but also on offer is self defence, rollerblading and dancing (latin and hip hop).

Just like the west they also have the anime appreciation society, however these clubs go one step further and actually combine it with cosplay activities. For those of you who don't know, cosplay is when a bunch of full grown adults dress up as Japanese anime cartoon or video game characters. Actually i think some of these clubs are pure cosplay clubs, which leaves me to wonder what they do when they get together. Do they dress up and take pictures of each other, or walk around campus and town like some sort of posse/gang? Strange.

There are also some real dubvious clubs here that you would never see in the west. Like the 'make-up' club, that teaches you how to apply make up, and the 'model' club for anyone who thinks they can strutt it like a tiger. This one and the 'work-out' club for boys (see picture) seems a bit wanky to me.















and of course it wouldn't be asia without a karaoke (ktv) club. On open day you could step up to the mic and showcase your talents, but i'm unsure what sort of activities they hold. perhaps competitions, discounted room hires in the surrounding ktvs?

The rest of the clubs are also quite odd - the magic club, the 'mystery' club, if you're a fan of mystery novels and shows, the korean cultrue appreciation society (more for those girls who can't get enough of korean dramas), and the arts and crafts club, something i'd expect to see at a clubs day for a primary school. well each to their own i suppose.

Some clubs are much more popular than others. There was an environmental protection club stall, but sadly they didn't seem too popular. The english club apparently takes in the most number of members each year out of all the clubs. Appart from organizing weekly English corner (language exchange) sessions, i'm not even sure what other activities they organize.
Despite recruiting about 500+ members the joining fee is not cheap, at 20rmb per person. This is for the duration of their undergrad studies though.
The thing is, from the type of activites i've seen them hold i can't really see where all the money is being spent or where the expenses are being incurred. I also recall that many of my students had told me they had joined clubs in first year, but that most turned out to be disappointed with the activities organized by most of them.

Even more disturbing is the fact that every time i go out to a local restaurant outside of campus, there always seems to be some club holding a committee dinner in one of the private function rooms, complete with alcohol. and I know it's a commitee dinner because several times some of my students have been part of those little parties and have told me what they're doing there.
Seeing that transparency is not the greatest in China, it wouldn't surprise me if several of these 'committee dinners' are classified as 'sundry expenses' when it comes to deliving the yearly budget (if in fact budget reports are done at all!).

I thought it was funny that corruption is happening at even the very grass roots levels of chinese society. The poor freshmen students who bring in the new money each year don't realize where all their membership fees go. But after they reach second year I'm sure most of them are clamouring to join the committees to 'reclaim' some of that money and to get a piece of the action. TIC.

The aftermath of exams

Well finally all supplementary exams are completed and graded, and now I can sit back and reflect on my first semester of assessment.

I don't know how Chinese students compare to western students in attitude when it comes to exams, since i've never assessed western students. The only point of comparision i can make is with myself.

I did end up failing students in both my oral and written subjects, though for my oral subjects I eventually had to pass everyone. That's an unspoken rule here in China with most of the oral classes at chinese universities (and especially lower tier uni's like mine). But even after making the oral supplementary exam ridiculously easy with lame ass topics such as : tell me your favourite thing about western or chinese culture, or introduce yourself, I STILL had a handful of students who could barely express themselves or barely understand simple questions i asked. The best i could do was to tell them that if it was up to me i'd fail them, and a stern warning to pick up their proficiency in their remaining years here at uni, lest they remain jobless after graduation.

I happened to bump into the dean of the english dept after all the supp exams were done, and in the nicest and most indirect way he indicated that he would prefer me to pass all the students first time the next time i give an oral exam. all the while saying he respects my decision and my approach to teaching. He explained that if too many students failed the first exam then central administration would require his department to write a report explaining the failure rate. apparently 10-15% is too high a rate from the usual 0%.
It might look great for the department, but i know many of these students are going to struggle to prove their english if they ever manage to land a job.

For the written supplementary exam I made it exactly the same as the original exam, but with the content changed. I even kept the order of the questions exactly the same as the original, sent out the answers to the original exam, and made myself available for consultation at every oppotunity. 2/10 of the students who took the supplementary still managed to fail, and fail badly! It's like they hadn't even looked at their mistakes over the winter holiday! Something I've noticed about the written exam is that many students do this thing of copying the entire passsage if they don't know what to do for the question, somehow thinking that i can reward part marks for practicing handwriting!
Anyway, before i submitted the supp exam results I had to check with the dean what he wanted me to do about these two students who failed by a long shot. Thankfuly i was given the green light to fail them, and fail them i did without any sympathy. tough love.

There was also the annoying practice of some students begging me to let them pass or review their exam results. Obviously I couldn't change their grades, no matter how pitiful or nice they sounded. I figured it was also a lesson in responsibility for ones actions and accountabiltity, something that is probably lacking a bit more in China compared to the west.

The last thing of interest was how the written supplementary exams were administered. My students were bunched together with students from other subjects in an exam room to do their supp. While there i witnessed one student from another major get caught cheating with a small piece of paper with notes. The monitor only confiscated the bit of paper and exam, and made the student sit there for 2 minutes before returning the exam! seems being caught cheating only results in a time penalty at my uni!

The other thing I noticed was that a student finished and left the exam room BEFORE another 'late arrival' walked in, about 45 minutes into the session. I have a feeling the 'late arrival' will kick ass in his supp score.