A new semester begins

We arrived back in Guangzhou a week ago after a long and uneventful flight. We went non-stop from Newark to Hong Kong, a long 15 ½ hours in all. I had a bad case of the “legs” and had decided to not take an Ambien in an effort to minimize jet lag (not completely successful). I did a bit of squirming in my seat but once we were on the ground it was all quickly forgotten. It was a short 28 minute hop to Guangzhou where we were met by two of our colleagues and a driver and we were dropped at the apartment that we had used with such great success last year. Less than 24 hours later Eli walked in the door from Hong Kong and we adjusted to sharing a (small) space for the first time in 11 years. We are doing well with it.

Our responsibilities include team teaching a course in Social Administration along with some other “duties that may be assigned”. As it is developing, Ellen has taken on the teaching of a course in Industrial Social Work (?) for a sociology colleague who felt ill-equipped to teach it. She will also pick up some of the work at the Children’s Palace, working with parents and para-educators to develop a firm foundation for the provision of education services for children with autism. And she is once again leading a Labor discussion group on the undergraduate campus, a weekly event that attracts some of the brightest and most able students. Once the stars align, the work with the Guangzhou labor un1on shall resume, the motivating purpose behind her work here.

In this latter activity, she will be joined by Eli as he begins the two year or more process of researching and writing his PhD dissertation. He has already made some helpful connections and has just arranged to be given a Visiting Lecturer position so that he can have an extended stay v1sa. He continues to have our young female students in a swoon and his fluency in the language only adds to his desirability. Sorry girls, he is spoken for.

My activities include the course with Ellen, a weekly seminar for MSW students on topics of my choice and the beginnings of an effort at the Children’s Palace. The director there, Xie Weichao, is a young, articulate and dynamic woman who cemented a relationship with Ellen last year around the autism work. Sunday evening, the Autumn Festival, Weichao took us out for dinner at a beautiful outdoor restaurant. After some pleasantries and beaucoup food, she took me firmly into her gaze and said “So, what are you going to do for the Children’s Palace during your visit?” After some discussion we agreed that I would head up some effort having to do with children with cancer. This is shaping up as an intriguing project, likely focused on identifying the current state of social supports for these youngsters and their families. I will try to recruit students from the five social work programs here and direct them in this volunteer effort.

One last shared project that Ellen and I are developing is training for social work teachers. Often times these are not social workers but people who majored in public administration or sociology and know little about the values and ethics of the profession. We hope to test out a three day training in late October for Guangzhou-based teachers, with later events for more distant faculty. It is a great hoot to organize our thoughts to do this work, we are quite trusted by our colleagues and we are helping build this important capacity for China (no one would hire us to do this in the US, for sure!)

As is customary, we have been on a round of dinners, fewer of the ceremonial sort than in the past, now that we have dimensional relationships with people here. Despite expectations of inflation of food costs, we continue to find good value in fine dining on the cheap. Dinner for three can range from $9-$15 dollars with more than you would usually want to eat in a sitting; oh, and Ellen never has to search for her collapsible chopsticks. Having Eli here has opened up new possibilities; in the past we relied on some written instructions that had been prepared for us and admonitions that we did not eat meat (not usually understood). Now we have the run of the menu and despite the great emphasis on animals as food (rabbits, dogs, scorpions, snakes, you name it) there is a great variety of vegetable choices available.

Weather is hot and steamy; today the high is 97˚ and the rest of the week calls for highs in the 90’s. Fortunately, we are airconned here and are amazed how the large majority of the people survive in the heat. They do, and they do well with it. There is some renovation going on in an apartment in our building and yesterday men were hauling sand up three flight of stairs in baskets, each weighing about 25 pounds, with two balanced on a shoulder pole. And these guys weigh about 110 pounds… all this in the nearly 100˚ weather!

This morning we team taught our first class in Social Administration. This is a large undergraduate class of about 50 students and they seem to be bright and mostly engaged group. We led them through a series of organizing tasks and given the general “housekeeping” nature of the class, they seemed eager to participate. We have this class organized in an unusual manner, we are meeting them once a week for “lecture” and once a week we are meeting with each of 8 small groups for 30 minutes to give them some individual attention. This allows us to check on their comprehension of English and is also a more conducive environment for them to ask questions, something they are loathe to do in the class. No matter how often we might request questions, no matter how we emphasize that with the subjects we are discussing there are often more than one right answer, they have been long indoctrinated otherwise. The small groups offer a useful device to overcome some of these traditions.

We are aware that these students have struggled mightily to get where they are, overcoming huge obstacles, competing in national exams that dominate their last year in high school, and have families who have great expectations of what they will do with this important opportunity. One ugly consequence is the high rate of suicide among young Chinese (not concentrated especially among university students but they are not exempt). The pressure is unbelievable. Our intention is to expose them to a different sort of learning environment, but there is little else that supports open inquiry, an exposure to the joy of learning for its own sake. They feel they have a nation to build and no one lets them forget it.

No entry is complete without an anecdote about the peculiarities of Chinese bureaucracy (not better or worse then other varieties, just different). When we arrived here we were told that our class would be on Saturday afternoon. Our schedule here is very fluid and weekends, per se, have little importance, so we nodded and said OK. But it turned out that the students were really opposed to such an arrangement so we requested that a new time be found. As it transpires, teaching on Saturday violates university policy so with that information we thought, hey, no problem”. Not so fast, mister, as it appears that the Social Work department had specifically requested an exemption form the policy because of perceived staffing exigencies (this was before it was certain that we would be doing the teaching). Since that special request had been granted, it would now be difficult to NOT use the favor granted and teach during the week. I am glad to report that in the event our special request to rescind the privilege granted in response to an earlier special request was granted, and we are not teaching on Saturday

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