Sinotrekn

NPR mention

After listening to a National Public Radio report on the upcoming Olympics, I was moved to contact them and express my views. My email was read on air. You can listen to it at the following link,  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89248544&sc=emaf.

Lament

I sometimes don't like Beijing. I often think of my life in Shijiazhuang and wish for a return to those days. Life was much simpler when I wasn't working 6-7 days a week and catching a 6:50 A.M. bus only to return home late in the evening. Part of it I like. I like the responsibility of being a manager again. I enjoy putting together the pieces of the puzzle and orchestrating. Of course, I love teaching. My students and I are close and I enjoy working with them. But, I miss the students and lifestyle of Shijiazhuang. Can I go home again? Please?

A few days ago, April and Victoria came to Beijing to see me. Both represent why i like SJZ. They are dedicated students from humble backgrounds trying to better themselves and make a difference. They are warm hearted and grateful for what they think I've done for them. They are the kind of students that I came to China to teach. And, they like hanging out with me, they're mentor.

Perhaps it's my sub-conscious desire to have had more children, but I have to admit that I love playing the role of surrogate father and mentor to these students. Keeping in touch with the students has been wonderful. For example, Brando stopped by the other day to help Sophia with her computer problems. It was a wonderful reunion seeing him again. I  have secretly always hoped that he and Sophia would become a couple, but that was not to be. Sophia told me she was in love with a boy with whom she went to middle school. They have been spending a lot of time communicating with each other via QQ (like MSN Messenger). She told me she loved this boy and asked my advice about what to do. I advised her to tell him. She might be pleasantly surprised by his response. Sophia went home to SJZ over the New Year holiday and talked to the boy. She returned to BJ and the look on her face told me all was well. She said he felt the same way. I am so happy for her and so relieved. Her mother has been trying to match her up with some eligible guys for awhile now and I know this has made her very unhappy.

So the relationships are important. But, so is the place. I like SJZ. In spite of the pollution and low pay, I was happy there and I often think of returning. I've been invited to return to Hebei Normal University to teach and, frankly, I'm tempted. I've also been asked to meet with the director of the Center for Academic and Cultural Exchanges here to discuss my plans for next year. They're anxious for me to stay at Tsinghua and want to lock me into another year as soon as possible.

One thought I've had is to spend another year in Beijing, retire in the U.S. to draw on my social security, and return to teaching in SJZ. For a long term plan, it sounds rather intriguing. What do you think?

It's been awhile

It's been awhile since my last posting. A lot of water under the bridge. Work has generally gone well. The first semester will end in a couple of weeks. (We're on a holiday break now and I'm recovering from a chest cold.) I'll be the program coordinator next semester. My work on this began over a month ago. We are offering 18 courses to our 230 students. Some of the courses are design by Oxford Brooks University--business classes, others we do. A few are designed in cooperation with Adelaide University and other partner schools. I'll not be teaching in the University of London, SOAS economics course next term since my teaching hours have been cut way back because of my administrative duties.

I put together the courses for intro to business II and urban planning. The latter is a 2 hour seminar for our students who will be going to Michigan State University next year to get a master degree in urban planning. Should be fun. The term project is a re-design of the Wudaokou area near Tsinghua. I like the irony of being a Michigan grad creating a course for MSU.

Not all has been fun. I had some difficulty adjusting to life in Beijing but I managed. BJ is big and impersonal. Fortunately, I have some friends who helped in the transition. The teachers I work with are terrific and that helped. I got involved with someone and it didn't work out. Unfortunately, the situation turned sour.

Further bad news. I bought an electric bike and was able to get to work in just 35 minutes during rush hour. It was great. Unfortunately, someone stole the battery from it one night and I had to get it replaced. Batteries are expensive. The very next week I parked it in an open parking lot next to the school cafeteria on a Sunday while I went in and had lunch. When I came out, the bike was gone, locks and all. Thieves have a field day here. I was talking to April last night who was at the train station getting a ticket to Beijing. While she was buying her ticket someone stole her purse. The second time in one month for her.

I still keep in contact with many of my former students, like April. In fact, 3 of them joined me for Christmas Eve dinner. That was an event. Will's girlfriend, Jane, manages a new restaurant in a hutong near Wangfujing. We decided to create our own dinner instead of paying to eat out at a hotel for 1,000 RMB a person. We shopped for food over a two day period. I put together the menu and helped the chef's figure out how to cook some of the food. They had never prepared Western food before. It was a lot of fun. About 15 of us ate the feast that consisted of pumpkin soup, salad, stuffed mushroom caps, glazed ham, goose with chestnut stuffing, chestnut gravy, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, veggies, apple pie and ice cream. It was to die for.

So, I'd say my first few months in Beijing have had mixed results. It's nice to be making some real money, but I'm not sure I want to stay here. My heart is still in Shijiazhuang.

Could you remember us, Sir?

When Ricky left in May, he told me that during the last few days he was here he was trying to avoid students. Too much crying, he said. I remember thinking at the time that my turn was coming soon. It has arrived.

 

Today, I received an email from the class monitor of my second year International Trade class. I’ve been their teacher for two years. Near the end of the email, she said, “We, the students of 05 international trade, are your friends forever.  Could you remember us, Sir?” When I read the last line I lost it and started crying like a baby. Yes, I’ll remember. I’ll remember to the end of my days.

Tsinghua bound

I signed a contract to teach at Tsinghua University in the fall. I will move to Beijing after I finish teaching in the summer institute at Hebei Normal University. After having resisted the lure of a big time university and the big city for several years, I have succumbed. Tsinghua is the #1 or #2 university in China (depending on whose rankings you read). I’ll be able to do some part time consulting as well. This effort is already well underway. I’ll be making a great deal more money which will allow me to stay in China longer. My current plan is to teach at Tsinghua for two years then see if want to stay in China longer after that. Right now, I have no desire to return to the United States. This is simply to great a life to give up.

 

I taught my last class at Huihua on Thursday. It was rather anti-climatic. I ended the class early so that students who wanted to could take their final oral exam a week early. Several teams took advantage of the offer. Next week it’s exams each day. I have not made a big deal about leaving. Many students have stopped by to say good bye or ask me to change my mind. The second year English majors are very disappointed. They’ve been waiting two years to have me as their teacher and now I’m leaving. Most are not shy in telling me why they think I’m good teacher or the impact I’ve made on them. David (a second year) said “We learn more than English from you. We learn how to succeed.”

 

Tonight I taught my last class at the #2 Middle School. The graduates of this school will all be admitted into tier one universities throughout China. These kids are good. Many speak English about as well as a native born American. They are an impressive lot. Chen, the guy who hired me to fill in for the teacher that left, asked if I would work there full time next year. For a second I was tempted. When I agreed to help them out I didn’t know if I would like teaching high school students. These kids were a joy to teach.

 

So, my bold experiment of taking a year off to teach in China has turned into my new career. I feel at home in the classroom (aside from the more than occasional anxiety of wondering if I’m doing well as a teacher). When I walk into the classroom and say “Good morning” and all the students look at me, smile and say “Good morning” back, I believe at that moment that it was my destiny to be a teacher.

 

My Tsinghua students will be preparing to go to western universities to finish their degree work. I’ll be helping them strengthen their English language skills, critical thinking skills, dealing with intellectual property issues, using common IT tools and working effectively in teams. Should be great fun.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely

I reminded the students at today’s English Corner that this is the 40^th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. I then asked them what they were doing 40 years ago today. The looked a little perplexed and finally one of them said, “We weren’t born yet.” Right! I was and I was a senior at Rhode Island College fretting about the war in Vietnam and becoming increasingly agitated at students who didn’t seem to care about the war one way or the other. I created a movie for my art class entitled “Commitment” that was meant to show that students needed to understand what was going on and make a commitment. My prof thought it was an anti-war film and labeled it as such for a film competition. I didn’t win anything, but the guy who helped me make the film became my roommate at Michigan the following fall. It was at Michigan that I became radicalized and fervently anti-war (thank you SDS). I still remember my first protest march and encounter with tactical police, rooftop sharp shooters, police dogs, rifles, and the other paraphernalia of protest and order.

 

Today’s EC topic was how much should parents be involved in the education of their children and should they sacrifice their interests to afford the best schools (pre-school through university) for their child. Pretty tame stuff compared to my memories of confronting police dogs. I learned a lot in the streets of Ann Arbor and
Washington, D.C.; things my parents didn’t quite understand; things I didn’t share with them or with my students today. Sometimes education happens when you’re alone—just you facing your nemesis be it dog or rifle. It’s a lonely feeling, but sometimes you can get by with a little help from your friends.

Doctor, doctor

Three of the doctors in my class at the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University successfully defended their doctoral dissertations yesterday. They will soon add Ph.D. after their names to complement their M.D. suffix. All my students attended a very nice banquet in their honor. I was also told that the banquet was also in my honor, their English teacher. They made a very nice toast to me. It was long and I’m certain I turned all shades of red before it was finally over. That aside, we had a helluva time. Everyone was in such great spirits. These doctors work insane hours and they were ready to have a good time at the restaurant. Lily, Mary, and Audrey are the new Ph.D.s. I have been teaching them English for 70 weeks now. They say I’m a good teacher, but I’m the one who has benefited the most by getting to know this terrific group of people. I know about them, their spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, children, interests and much more. I will be leaving many good friends behind when I move to Beijing. This group will be especially hard to leave.

Beijing 2008 and leaving Huihua

I will be teaching in Beijing in the Fall of 2007. I have received two job offers, one from Tsinghua Universityand one from the International College at Beijing (China Agricultural University). I hope to end up at ICB where I would be a lecturer teaching business courses. This means I’ll be living in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics. I’ve submitted my ticket application already and will find out in October if I got lucky in the ticket lottery.

 

I have mixed feelings about leaving Huihua College. I have a many friends here and I like my lifestyle in
Shijiazhuang. It’s comfortable and I make enough money to get by on. The students are aware I will not be here in the fall and I have received letters, text messages, and many comments from students who wish me well but will miss me. One letter was particularly poignant. A student described, in detail, why having me as her teacher was important to her. I was her first foreign teacher. In a class yesterday after I gave a group assignment to one of my third year English major classes, some of the students called me over to ask me a question. It was about one of the Chinese teachers. We were soon engaged in an intense conversation that ended up involving half the class. I was reminded once again that I am more than a teacher to these kids; I am a friend and confidant. I wonder if I could build such a bond with students at a tier one university in the country’s capital city. I’m told that I’ll be teaching a lot of rich kids who are a little jaded. My students at Huihua are generally not rich; many are from small rural villages or small cities (by Chinese standards). I expect it will be different.

 

On the bright side, I’ll actually make enough money so that I can afford to maintain storage of all my stuff in
Michigan and have enough left over to save in spite of the high cost of living in Beijing. My salary will more than double. There are other business opportunities in Beijing as well. I have been meeting with a Chinese-American company involved in executive education. If things work out, I could do interesting work and make a lot of money with them on a part-time basis.

 

So, things are looking fairly good right now. With money matters taken care of, there would be no compelling reason for me to leave China any time soon. Although I dream of the Maine coast, I think it is still a few years off for me. I am not ready to leave China. In fact, the longer I’m here the more I want to stay. I had thought that I would get Chinaout of my system if I stayed two or three years. In fact, the opposite has happened. Yesterday, while my students were preparing answers to some questions from their reading, I was looking out the window at a dormitory wall. It reminded me of a similar scene at Suzhou University. It was a very warm day yesterday. It was like being back in Suzhou during the summer of 1997. For a few moments I was transported back ten years and relived the pleasure of that wonderful experience.

 

My students are grappling with questions of immigration and forced assimilation in my American Culture class. During the debates, each of the classes talks about my experience in China. Some have been pointing out that I have not been forced to assimilate into Chinese culture; I’m still an American with American cultural values. One student asked me, “Bill, have you assimilated into Chinese culture?” For a moment I stood silent much to the delight of several students who started to laugh. I really had to think about my answer. What I was thinking was, “I am different than you.” This thought threw me a little because I realized that I do not usually think of my students as Chinese and me as American. I am so absorbed in my life here that I had to consciously remember that I am from a different culture.

 

There are just five weeks left in the spring term. Soon, my time at Huihua will be over. I am excited about moving to Beijing and teaching there. It will be a wonderful experience. I wonder if my heart will make the move with me or if it will catch up with me somewhere down the road.

A pre-Labor Day update

I was chatting with Zhang laoshi today and let him know that I was not returning to Huihua in the fall. He was very supportive and thinks I will have better opportunities in BJ.

I had my last class ever with the 3rd year international business majors. They leave for internships after the May holiday. I have been their oral English teacher for three years. It was a little difficult for me at the end of the class when I had to say good bye. The kids all had me autograph their textbooks and they took a lot of pictures with me. Ellen had a difficult time. She found it difficult to look at me during the entire class. I could see her lower lip quivering and tried not to let it bother me. I just wanted to get through the class and say my good byes and leave. All ended well. The kids were having a great time during the picture taking and we joked and laughed a lot. Ellen and and several others gave me nice hugs when they said good bye. It was one of those bitter sweet experiences.

Saying good bye to the other students at the end of the term will not be as difficult as it was with this group. Many of the 3rd year English majors are leaving for practice teaching and they have been saying good bye. Some of the 2nd year English majors are sad because they have been waiting two years to have me be their teacher and now I will not be here during their 3rd year.

On the other hand, two classes of 1st year English majors will not have an oral English teacher when they return from the May holiday. Their teacher, Ricky, is returning to England and will not be back until the fall. Several of the students came to English Corner yesterday to lobby me to be their teacher. They are nice kids and I know Ricky enjoys teaching them. I hope to get one of the classes. This will replace the class of 3rd years that are leaving for their internships.

In other teaching news, I will begin teaching Saturday mornings at the #2 Middle School. This is one of the elite high schools in SJZ. The classes are large, 60 kids aged 15-17. I'll teach two classes, two 45 minute periods each. I'm also negotiating with them to train their teachers. I'm experienced doing that so it would be fun. Filling in Saturday morning with work is a good thing. Frankly, I have little preparation time for my other classes so I welcome the additional work and income. I want to buy a small video camera so this will pay for it.

So, life goes on. Lumeng has started a new enterprise as of this morning. She's selling pineapples on the street instead of books. Book selling is very difficult this time of year and she has been unhappy. The more depressed she gets the more difficult it is to be around her, so I hope this is successful. I stopped by her selling place this morning and she was really energized and was selling her first pineapple. Here, they use a knife to remove the pineapple covering then use what looks like a troweling tool to cut a swirling design into the pineapple. It looks quite nice although I think it's a waste of the sweetest part of the fruit. I hope she's successful. At least the culture police won't be confiscating her inventory and fining her for selling pirated books.

Next week I will go to Shenzhou, a city about two hours away to join in a big party to celebrate Cynthia's upcoming wedding. I am so looking forward to this reunion of the international business class of 2006. It will be the first time I've seen many of them since they graduated. I'm trying to arrange to go with Sophia and Sherry since they both will be in SJZ on the 2nd. On the 3rd I plan to go to Shandong province with Victoria to visit her sister and see the home of Confucius. I may even go to BJ for a couple of days. Three of the teachers are going to Tibet. They leave today.

My medical education

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, or so my mother used to say. The last several weeks have been health hell. To summarize, both ears became blocked, I lost a filling in a molar, I had a flu that kept me down for a week, and my knee deteriorated to the point that walking was almost an impossibility. Other than that I was just fine and I didn’t miss a class.

 

Being a methodical person, I tackled each problem in turn. A doctor prescribed a combination of western and traditional Chinese medicine to solve the flu problem (I don’t think any of the stuff worked—it just ran its course and finally went away). My doctor friends at the #2 Hospital set me up with an ear specialist. After several days of using ear drops, a doc used traditional water torture to clean out both of my ears. I still have one more visit left since she couldn’t clear my left ear completely. I have seen a dentist at the #3 hospital and she’ll put a crown on my tooth beginning next week.

 

And then there’s the knee. Ah yes, the knee. My doctors where not too happy to see me again. This time, they insisted, I must rest the knee for a month, not walk too much, sit in my classes and undergo a procedure to reduce the inflammation in the knee that was causing most of the problems, and exercise my leg.

 

On Sunday morning, I was off to the #3 hospital on my electric bike for an appointment in the operating room for outpatient treatment. This was my second OR experience in a Chinese hospital so I was not too nervous about it. Chinese OR procedures by American standards are very casual. Doctor Shao came out to the waiting room to collect me and escort me into the OR. He then had me remove my shoes and pants that I stuffed (along with my jacket) on a table next to the operating table. There was another patient in the adjacent OR undergoing what looked like a similar treatment as mine except he was under a general anesthetic. This caused me a little concern because I was not given anything. One of the docs said I’d get a local anesthetic. He than had me help him with his English pronunciation which was okay with me since it took my mind off of what was going to happen next. In fact, a couple of the docs (including those working on the other guy) started asking me questions about English language medical terms. Fortunately, I’ve been working with doctors for two years so I have picked up a lot of medical terms. Several of the doctors graduated from the Hebei Medical University so we have a lot of acquaintances in common including their oral English teacher, a doc from Australia. One of the docs taught me how to ask a person’s age if they are young or old. You use different forms depending on how old a person looks.

 

While all the distractions were going on, Dr. Shao was busy painting my leg in preparation for the “procedure”. They then draped me. The last drape was placed on a bar over my head so I could not see the field of operation. In this case it was a good idea. It was when Dr. Shao said, “Mr. Bill, you will feel some pain” that my pulse started to jump. He wasn’t kidding. The procedure calls for the insertion of a needle in the upper part of the knee. The needle is attached to a bag of liquid containing antibiotics and other medication. The fluid goes into the knee and the doc manipulated the knee so that the fluid cleans out the whole knee area. In all, about 1,000 ml of liquid is used to flush the knee. A second needle is inserted into the right side of the knee and this one drains the liquid out after the knee’s been flushed. The first needle wasn’t too bad. The second one was a problem. It required a good deal of force and it was deep into the knee. He inserted the needle just as I was trying to explain some minor point in English to one of the docs. My groaning was involuntary.

 

The knee cleaning took about an hour. When it was over, a couple of the docs helped me put my clothes on. I was a little disoriented. When I left the OR, Lumeng was waiting for me and said, “Where are your shoes?” I looked down at my feet and sure enough, no shoes. One of the attendants collected them for me and I slowly made my way out of the hospital to my e-bike. The walk seemed to take forever. I could only manage a couple of steps at a time. The ride home was a little surreal.

 

By the next day, most of the inflammation had gone. Now, I’m left with the pain at the original incision point that seems to have gotten worse. I’ve stayed off my feet as much as possible given my teaching schedule. I even had a class changed from the 4^th floor to the 1^st floor to help avoid some stairs. I’m exercising to build up my quads and stretching to keep my knee straight when I walk. At this rate, I should be normal in 2, 3 months? Who knows. But, I’m certainly getting a first hand education in operating room procedures in Chinese hospitals. That’s got to be worth something.