Back at it

---

Welcome back! It's been a very long time since I last wrote. It's been one of those situations where nothing and everything has happened since my last update and, not knowing where to start, I kept putting it off and putting it off to the point where it's now been about 4 months.



Life is good. Life is fine and normal. So much so that it's nearly painful, honestly. I have my routines, and each week blends into the next with the drone and drawl of normal life. Indeed, living in China has officially become just... normal.

Recently, I've undergone a kind of reawakening. This winter, I got into the terrible habit of sleeping in a bit on my weekdays. See, we're not meant to be at work until about 1:30 on any given weekday, so it becomes very easy to just snooze it out until 10... 11... 12? As a result, a lot of my early adventuring started to kind of die off. With the return of the sun in mid-March, and the arrival of some new, enthusiastic faces, it's been back to pavement pounding and re-discovering the hot spots of Hangzhou.

The last week of March, I started initiating the kinds of field trips that my early Chinese friends used to drag me out on a year ago. We went to the tulip gardens, we've hit up my Starbucks on the lake, we're going to the night market, we're going to KTV and clubs... and it's all per my suggestions that grow into huge group ordeals. That's been the biggest change: I'm the initiator now. Felix is gone. Annie is gone. Peggy is gone. The folks I used to follow are all gone, so I've finally realized that that means I'm supposed to be stepping up.

Beyond that, the other great thing about new people being here has been their suggestions for things they're "supposed" to see in Hangzhou: "hey, have you heard of this......." and then we go.

Naturally, having new people has completely changed the dynamics of our center as well. Pretty much all of the old bad blood is officially out of the center. People are generally positive, happy to be here and hard-working. As a result, we don't have any of the old obnoxious problems that used to make my life at the center pretty miserable. Instead, I've been able to work with James - our director - to mold and shape the kind of environment that we want to work in.

Beyond that, there's been a massive influx in our center's makeup. Before, it was predominantly American. On our staff of 10 foreign trainers, 8 of us were American. Now? We're currently at 9 foreigners and... 1 is from Canada, 1 is from Pakistan, 1 is from England, a whopping 3 are from South Africa and only 3 of us are Americans. To rub salt in it, the other two Americans are male. If you include James... he's an American dude, too. So yes -- I am officially THE American female on staff. This has led to an entirely new and unexpected cultural influx... in the name of Cricket.

Now, let me first tell you a thing or two about Cricket. First of all, it's apparently a very popular sport. More so than baseball, despite the fact that we do, in fact, have THE World Series... but I digress. Second of all, the sport, in no way, involves hitting hideous, demonic, black or brown jumping insect-fiends with a large bat. Learning this was a huge disappointment to me. This, to me, makes perfect sense as a pastime in a place like South Africa. But this is not the premise of the sport. Get that out of your ignorant mind now. Thirdly, this is not dizzybat. Nor is it croquet. However, the bowlers do, in fact, dance their happy ways to the pitch. I'm just sayin.

The final thing to clarify in your minds - and on this I am actually serious: The sport of Cricket and the sport of baseball have a single similarity. After the point of hitting a ball with a wooden stick of some kind, the similarities end completely. It is a complete waste of time to try and compare these athletes and their abilities. It is a complete waste of time to try and understand one sport's rules in relation to the other's.

This has been an interesting metaphor for me. Sport is one of my favorite forms of diplomacy. And it carries on far beyond the field.

In the last several months, I have participated in several heated, heated discussions about cricket vs. baseball and rugby vs. American football. Topics range from the size of the players to the speed of the ball to the size of the field to the amount of pads someone is wearing. And these discussions have brought me to a remarkable conclusion: there's no sense in comparing the two. Cricket requires a different skill-set from baseball just as baseball requires a different skill-set from football and football from rugby and so on. But the revelation that I've had with this has nothing to do with sports.

My passion topic is education - I don't think I've left any doubt in any minds about that. In recent years, my favorite spin on education is comparative education. In this field, people LOOOOOOVE to talk about how China and India are trumping us in education stats.

Dummies.

That's like putting a rugby player on a baseball field and saying, "Man, this guy is a really bad athlete."

It goes something like this: The other day, I was sitting on my balcony with my coffee and my CNN app actually enjoying the 11am sunshine through the smog. My balcony is enclosed in glass. I was looking through these windows and noticed - I kid you not - that the windows are being held together by screws that have evidently been hammered crossways into the metal railing and hold the panes up like an easel. I'm glad to have discovered this because I continue to find screws on the floor my balcony and have been wondering for several months where they are coming from. So, seeing this, I chuckled and scoffed at this - just one more example of the wonder that is Chinese engineering and efficiency. And that's when it dawned on me.

From my balcony, I can see the hundreds of thousands of e-bikes and tuktuks and food carts that go pedaling off to work every morning and return home every night. There are 14.6 million people in the city of Hangzhou, and I swear every single one of them passes by my building every day. The overwhelming majority of these workers work in small businesses and small shops, as street cleaners or table wipers, babysit, wait tables, serve milk tea at a tea stand... Very, very few of them are carting off to major business offices or computer engineering... places... As a result (or this is a result of the fact that), in general, their focus is inherently different from our own. Chinese employees are not concerned about being able to compete on the global level for tech industry jobs... This is a culture that uses bamboo ladders to use a single hand chisel to scrape paint off of a 15x15' exterior wall. This is a culture that still washes its clothing - and freshly killed chickens - in the local creek. Meanwhile, sure, they have a top-notch railway system that is quite remarkable... but it only comes in handy to bring the wealthy to the wealthier. In the small cities, the economic boom is hitting the workforce in such a way that they're concerned about competing with the 14.6 million people that live with them in their "small" city of Hangzhou - a new-ish phenomenon. But here, everyone needs a job -- there's not really any such thing as unemployment here. Not yet, anyway. So right now there are millions of construction workers, millions of secretaries, millions of small-business owners, and so on all making about $1.50 an hour. You should see the number of people that it takes to sweep one street for an hour. Mind blowing. But it's not really about the street, now is it?

So, in the education world, here you have a China that's just recently switched back to the idea that they can compete with each other -- that it's not the government's decision what I want to be when I grow up. This competition brings an even higher pressure for what's known as filial piety here: honoring one's family, and saving face in public. Now, more than ever, there's a pressure to be the absolute best at whatever it is that you do. The result? Copious amounts of cheating. Cheating, in fact, is pretty much condoned. It's expected. When rote memorization is the name of the game, it makes sense to... well... use your resources, which is probably the kid sitting next to you in class.

The result is a significantly lower level of independent thought. There is simply one right way to do things because otherwise there is no way to quantify this student's ability. You see this in our English classes all the time. There'll be the one kid who's following along with what we're teaching. That kid shouts out an answer, and suddenly the entire class - I kid you not - is creepily CHANTING the answer that kid just shouted out... even if it's wrong. Creepy. "Hey kids! Where does a tiger live?" "...on the farm?" "ON THE FARM. ON THE FARM. ON THE FARM. ON THE FARM." (insert zombie arms here). In fact, independent thought is somewhat frowned upon. Going against the grain is disrespectful and incorrect. I've seen examples of that in my classes, too. The following situation led to a student being referred to as slow and stupid in front of the girl's father and our center manager. And the father agreed. See if you follow:

Lesson 1: How's the weather outside, Goofy?

(these aren't actually in exact order... but it's for the sake of the point)

Lesson 2: Where did you go yesterday?

Lesson 3: How was the movie? (exciting... I was excited, etc)

Review conversation, several weeks later:

Jessi: "Jenny, where did you go yesterday?"

Jenny: "I went to... I went to the.. my friend... my friend soccer match."

Jessi: "You went to a soccer match?"

Jenny: "Yes. My friend I like to play soccer."

Jessi: "Oh cool - you went to your friend's soccer match. How was it?"

Jenny: "It was cloudy."

Jessi: "It was cloudy? Was it cold?"

Jenny: "No, it was small cloudy."

Jessi: "Oh ok wow. Was it exciting?"

Jenny: "I was boring. No I like to play soccer."

None of the above phrases were taught, let alone in correlation to one another.

To further the point, this is the same student who, when asked, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" told me, "I want to be a drawer," with our hand gesture for drawing pictures. When asked, "what are your hobbies?" responded, "I like to listen to play piano." "Do you play the piano?" "No, I like to listen to play the piano." She was publicly shamed for each of these, despite my explanation of my understanding what she was saying. This child refuses to use our cookie cutter responses, is piecing a variety of language elements that she's learned together independently and making the language work for her... so I am therefore required to fail her on an assessment? I'm sorry, but that's bologna. However, that's what the parents expect because in a few years' time these kids will be taking exams and delivering fluency speeches that require cookie cutter responses. Bologna.

Back to America - this is the system with which the American system makers are trying to compete. They are trying to get our students to rack up in test scores against these people. And what will be the result? Well... let's have a look. What was the latest technological innovation to come out of China? And by China - please let us be informed - I mean mainland China... not Hong Kong. Not Taiwan. Mainland.

App can transform gray sky to blue

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) China and OgilvyOne Beijing recently launched an iPhone app Blue Sky to support the annual Earth Hour event. With a simple finger swipe, users can turn their pictures of polluted gray skies into clear blue skies.



...Fair enough. That's... cool.

Meanwhile, let's give credit where it's due: They have a rover that might send Chinese astronauts to the moon... or be sold to American private moon trekking expeditions. Someone in China figured out how to make a really-darn-thin condom... I mean, is this really what we're concerned about competing with?

China builds upon already existing ideas, and they're good at it - I get that. They want their students to continue to do so - I get that, too. That brings pride to their history and gives them a foundation on which to stand in this extremely fast-paced technological age.

But, American kids are taught to think and make decisions. We're taught to be independent and efficient as hell. Seriously... try getting a Chinese employee to laminate 15 cards or decorate a bulletin board some time. Bring your popcorn and a lawn chair. It's not a personal knock against anyone that I work with; I don't mean it as an insult. It's that I was raised in America where things get started and things get done. Step one, step two... even the worst employees that I've ever worked with -- but their idea of efficiency is non-existent. There's no cause:effect thinking here - that's a known fact that is the butt of many Chinese jokes. There's no forethought. There's, "finish it now, fix it later." Fortunately or unfortunately for them, that shows in their technologies, their lead-paint infested toy factories, their bird flu outbreaks, their overcrowding and - yes - even the graduation of their several hundred million university students of whom American schools are supposed to be so afraid. Unfortunate because, well... back to the drawing board. But fortunate because it keeps people employed. And in a nation of 1.6 BILLION people... that's important. Not new stuff.

So please, stop trying to compete with China. I am sorry that they are putting 300+ million college graduates into the workforce next year (yeah, equal to or more than the ENTIRE POPULATION of America). And yes, one or two of those people might be like my Jenny who thinks for herself and manipulates situations to act the way she wants them to. And yes, an American student wouldn't survive a day in the cut-throat Chinese university system... because we weren't trained to memorize and recite things - be they documents, poems, mathematical figures, or what other materials some other person had already written. No, instead in 8th grade my science teacher assigned us to the task of SEEKING OUT A PROBLEM TO SOLVE. My university math professor turned a famous poem into a math problem. A seventh-grade-teaching mentor of mine taught kids how to write essays by making them read Haiku outside.

We have 300-400 million people in America. We have plenty of room, plenty of time and loads of motivation. Do not - please - do not turn the next generation into mainland Chinese people. These are lovely people with a lovely culture... (which, by the way, is several thousand years old... slow and steady has won their race) but their thinking has no place in my country.

---

Photos

View from the Top 1
Night time view from my balcony.

Spring at West Lake
Welcome back, Springtime!

Field Trip!
Natalie and Taryn at the Tulip Gardens
(Nice shirt, Taryn... thief...)

Cricket
The wickets are supposed to stay up, Jessi. You Lose.

Tulip Garden
aka Taiziwan, Hangzhou