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Greetings once more,
I'm writing on this sincerely joyous occasion to mark the end of my stay in Minle, the final part of which was occasionally pleasant and at the same time, regularly drove me to the point of exasperation.
The last month, we've been working in a new area, in the foothills of the mountains, and so we've mostly been at around 2800m. The weather's been gorgeous n the mountains an ever present spectacular backdrop. Everyone's busy in the fields with their weird tractors or hoes and assorted bizzare implements, and the world looks like a vast never-ending series of big allotments.
I have a major psychological indisposition with regard to working in China. a)Due to my internal wiring, I am incapable of showing respect to someone due to the fact that they are older than me. and b) I find it impossible to maintain respectful obedience and servility for anyone because they are in a position of authority. In the sticks, China seems to be organised thus, from birth to death. When you start primary school, the teacher chooses a leader in each class, who tells the rest of the pupils to stand up and sit
down and leads the 'class response. He is most vocal in the military mechanics of the classroom. This extends right through to university in this area, where if you are friends with the leader, you may gain certain benefits. This statement may stand true and extend through the entire working life in many fields. People here are lovely, but they spend an awful lot of time listening to 'Mr C' and feigning interest and amusement, while Mr C waxes poetic. Mr B may suddenly enter the room, and Mr C turns into Mr slimy deference. Mr A is impossible to get hold of as he's always too busy, but should he turn up, everyone instantly shits their own pants. Noone can ever offer their own ideas toward him, as he is verging on divinity.
Recently, time seems like an endless, slow moving wheel of pain and people sit and stare, sit and talk, sit and exist and sometimes just congeal. People talk about food, the news, food, the sport, food, the pictures on the wall, and then about food. Mostly life is just eating and working. Noone has a hobby as noone has any freetime. Work is an all-encompassing
occupation. None of the volunteers that I know in rural China have got any Chinese friends that they socialise with, because everyone's work is their life and most of the teachers live in the schools, only leaving at the weekend to catch up with their family/children. People in the neighbourhood are can be dead nice though. A few weeks back, I took some empty bottles to a skip down the road. I met an old woman, who started telling me I couldn't put the bottles in the skip. I'd been in Minle around 7 months, yet I still found it impossible to find out from my colleague how to dispose of glass bottles. Persistent questions had led to the answer 'Put them by the side of the road and someone will collect them'. When I'd done this, they sat there for about 10 days untouched, then one morning I found them there all smashed up. It sounds weird, but sometimes people just won't give you a straight answer to a simple question.)
Anyway, the old woman led me off to her house, and told me to put them in a metal box she had there. Then, all the family
came out and cross-examined me. I then got invited in for bread n tea, n had my longest chat ever in Mandarin (well, a mixture of Chinese words and phrases n obscure desperation sign-language)., which lasted about 45mins. I see this as the pinnacle of my communication achievements in Chinese, as I haven't studied owt for over two months. Had to excuse myself eventually, which was a good thing as Sarah was worrying I'd been kidnapped.
Work has been a daily frontal lobotamy, but the operation is finally over leaving but a few scars. Every working act is painstakingly slow and involves an incredible amount of discussion between numerous people whilst we stand their scratching our heads, waiting, waiting, waiting. The sheer scale of imperatives I'm dealt daily is incredibly irritating. Sit/Eat/Go! are the main ones, the latter being given at the exact second everyone is expected to stand up and move simultaneously somewhere, with no consideration of the fact that you might be in the middle of something, and absolutely no warning. Just now, we just got summoned to see a leader without any notice, which is a common occurence. When one of the leaders calls one of
the Chinese, they must be ready to answer their phone and must be ready to jump. With us, someone will just turn up at the fron door and say, come on we're going. We need to see 'so and so' right now. As a foreigner you can haggle your way into getting a bit of leeway, but it's a real struggle because people here just don't understand it. They live in a clear hierarchy and are used to operating within it.
We finally managed to change the working schedule and greatly speed up the number of observations every day (but only by insisting we were just going to quit. Then they co-operated!). So now, the final day has arrrived, and tomorrow we head to the police station to sign off officially, then are off to Xining for a bit of birdwatching at Qinghai lake. Afterwards, we're going to help make a DVD of demonstration lesson lessons for VSO at another place in Gansu, then will head back to UK about 14/15 June. I've just finished making a teacher-training manual for Chinese primary teachers. The results of the training have been fantastic, and I've watched the transition from 'Victorian style'
classrooms with dictatorial teachers drilling words and phrases like some kind of military academy to...modern style classrooms, with teachers making flashcards, doing all kinds of communicative activities and letting students sit together and work in groups. That's been so satisfying for me, and the results have got better and better the longer we've been here, with a few minor exceptions (Many teachers and perhaps the head teacher in Sarah's last school were quite closed to modern teaching methods). It was a hard fight to convince the teachers that education could be done differently and that western teaching methods are effective. Beliefs seem so ingrained here, and there is such a strong consensus of thought combating it. There was a strong feeling that western methods were 'fun but ineffective in regard to preparing students for exams', and were unsuitable for Chinese students. Seeing the children comfortable, relaxed and enjoying life in the classroom is really rewarding, especially when you consider that at many of the schools (including some primarys) the students live in dorms in the schools, so most of their life is spent in this environment. 90% of teachers in my last area taught somewhere between 'quite good' and 'brilliant'
lessons, after all the trainin. So I feel I can now leave this place content that I've finally done something useful, and confident in the knowledge that it will never happen again.
I've added some photos of where we've been working and Minle itself, plus a few photos taken in Xian city, where we went for a meeting with some other volunteers, and experienced the luxury of an Indian restaurant where the food was amazing. The owner even had a picture of Sai Baba in previous incar in prime position
Bah! Time for a Tsingtao. Here's to freedom and the open road!
All the best to one and all,
Dave.X
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Elaine Kinnell
non-member comment
Fuckin fuck
Dave, yer a feckin genious how you write. I just got off my week with the wee violent stabbers at my school and your blog just made me smile my arse off. I never do facebook but so glad I did today and read your thing! You and Sarah are an an amazing couple of individuals. Christ though it looks beautiful but a wee bit bleak. Still, you went, you saw and it sounds like you changed things.... A LOT!!!! Cannae wait to but you both a pint! Elaine XXXXXXXXX