My New Superpower

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Meg

The other day in class, one of my middle-school boys tripped, knocked over some desks and got a bloody nose. I figure since it wasn’t actually inflicted by another student, I’m still a good teacher, right? When he got hurt, I didn’t know what to do for a moment, I mean, do I look after the hurt child, Daniel, and leave the other 29 unattended? In a room full of furniture that clearly dislikes students? My school has no policy on this kind of thing, because China has no guidelines for anything that hasn’t happened yet, and this was my first classroom injury.

In China, you can’t just take the kid to bathroom to clean up, because Chinese bathrooms are BYOTP. (I carry tissue packages in my backpack, but since I was teaching class and not, you know, backpacking, I didn’t have my bag with me.) So I sent another student, Andy, to get paper towels, which is more difficult than is sounds. Our school keeps paper towels in the main office, but they’re locked up with other controlled substances like ink refills and printer paper. I literally had a student dripping blood on my hands while the office assistant comes in to ask if I really gave permission to Andy to use the school paper towels? (Because he might have made up a story, and by the time the authorities find out there really is no bleeding classmate, Andy’ll be halfway to Mexico with his contraband Bounty!) And if I did give permission, then do I know where the key to the supply cabinet is?

I had my coat with me in class, because the school’s heat isn’t working properly, and I started fishing through the pockets looking for emergency supplies. Poor Daniel was seconds away from having a maxipad on his nose when the office twit came back with the paper towels.

Oh, the title? I bet you thought my new superpower would be something lame like “staying calm in a crisis” or “coping under pressure”. No way! My new superpower is the ability to make someone known as Maxi Pad Boy for the rest of his school career! Thankfully, the office twit brought the paper towels in time, and Daniel is still known thoughout the school as Dumpling Head.

With great power comes great responsibility.

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Dragonsocks

Posted on April 12, 2006 by Meg

My school just acquired two more books for our English library. One is a second copy of Harry Potter 6. Even assuming that whoever bought these books doesn’t read English and only picked the book based on color, what are the odds that he would pick one of the four books we already own?

The second is part four of seven in a certain pre-teen fantasy series. I’m not going to name the author, because Eric likes her writing, and I promised I’d stop bashing that series Dragonsocks or Dragonpiano or whatever it was called. (I didn’t know that Eric knew what “trite” and “derivative” meant! But he got annoyed and Eric never gets annoyed, so I shut up) Our new book isn’t about dragons, it’s actually about the intergalactic war between the psychic unicorn girl and the flesh-eating-bug aliens.

The unicorns win.

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The Laowei Secret Handshake

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Meg

Today is China and my two-month anniversary!

Last night, I got a phone call from Cora, another foreign teacher at a nearby school. When I was in England and I met other Americans, we’d laugh about how many potatoes and how much warm beer our British classmates could consume. In China, it’s exciting to run into someone from any country where they don’t blow their nose on the sidewalk.
After comparing the lies our headmistresses tell us and each other, we got down to business. I told her which nightmarket has a stall with deoderent, and she told me how to get to a downtown cafe that does a sideline in imported cheese. We have become junkies for Western products, and we tell each other how to get the next much-needed fix befor exchanging last names, ages or hometowns.

“What’s in Minnesota besides the Vikings?” I asked Cora, trying not to imagine her above-average Chinese middle-schoolers learning to say “Whatever” and “That’s different,”

“You follow the Vikings?”

“No, but my boyfriend has couch-coached them for almost 30 years. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got him undressed and saw his tattoo, it was too late. I liked him too much and I couldn’t escape.” (Living alone in a city where no one speaks English has been detrimental to my social skills)

“We also have the Mall Of America,” Cora told me. “It’s the biggest mall in the country! We’re the mall state!”

“This is exactly why statistics need context. There should be a malls:population ratio, or we should look at the relationship between square feet of shopping space to square miles of state.”

“Did you say you were from Massachussetts?”

“I’ve lived there for 6 years, but I was born in New Jersey. Oh, can you tell?”

“You bet,”

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You Want Me to What?

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Meg

When I was preparing to come to China, I tried to learn important phrases in Chinese, like “Thank you”, “How much?” and “Where is the bathroom?” I did not learn “And now your foreign teacher is going to sing Edelweiss,” which would have given me a split-second advantage this morning.

I tried to explain that I was brought here under false pretenses, I thought I was on my way to a meet-and-greet with a dozen prospective middle-school students, not putting on an impromptu lounge act. (I decided not to quibble with the dozen becoming a gross, after all, this is China and exponential population growth is to be expected)
Then I tried to explain that I don’t actually know Edelweiss. I have a vague impression of white flowers and the Von Trapp Family escaping the Nazis, but no lyrics or tune.
“It’s an English song,” the headmistress explained, clearly as baffled by my refusal to burst into song as I was by her request. “and you are American,”

I wanted to tell her that she had the wrong sister — it’s actually Bethie who’s musically talented. I wanted my dad’s church choir to carry me through. I wanted alcohol, Stick and a kareoke version of the Human League, which is the way I usually sing in public. But I wasn’t going to get any of this.

I wish this were a photo of me singing You Are My Sunshine, but it’s actually me lecturing in the same room.

The children then reciprocated by singing to me. Hey, Dad, in your extensive knowledge of Christian music through the ages, is there a verison of Jingle Bells about bats?

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Pictures For My Dad

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Meg

The Great Chinese Scallop Shell Stockpile:

The Final Resting Place Of Scuffy The Tugboat:

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Look, I can read!

Posted on April 7, 2006 by Meg

I’m not sure if identifying the words rain water on a gutter really count as literacy.

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Grave – Sweeping Day

Posted on April 4, 2006 by Meg

Today is Grave-Sweeping Day in Yantai. I can’t possibly express how pleased I am to find out Chinese holiday that doesn’t involve lighting any late-night fireworks under my window. On Grave-Sweeping Day, residents of Yantai don’t actually sweep graves. They honor their ancestors by burning paper money at crossroads, which the ancestors receive in the afterlife. I’m not really sure how 4he netherworldly economic works, but since every intersection in Yantai has a few of these incendiary offerings, I’d be more concerned about afterlife inflation.

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Mutants and Masterminds

Posted on April 4, 2006 by Meg

It’s hard to pick a favorite class, but I think my middle school boys are awesome. The other day, we did comparative adjectives. First, I asked the boys for their favorite X-men, and we played superhero charades. Some of the boys insisted that Spiderman was their favorite X-Man, and honestly, even in English the distiction between mutations is pretty fluid. And for all I know, there’s a Chinese crossover where Spiderman fights Magneto.

Then we watched X-Men, and then we covered comparative adjectives with a superhero compare-and-contrast. It was way better than the last time I ran this lesson!

The boys loved it, I encouraged them to argue (“No, no, Storm is stronger than Rogue!”) and I was able to introduce new vocabulary. Like mutant, crusader, vigiliante, henchman and nemesis. There was too much of a culture gap in this land of no-copyrights for me to explain Marvel and DC.
And we had a little trouble with minions and mastermind, until I told them that if I were going to take over the world, they could be my helpers. (I hope I don’t get deported.)

It was probably one of my best lessons, until one of the quiet kids — it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? — said “This is stupid. Who cares about X-Men? Superheroes are dumb!” I wanted to give him lines, but instead I made him say “Superheroes are dumber than superheroes with genetically enhanced brainpower”.

But I secretly hope he gets beat up after class.

Next Week: If I were a superhero, my superpower would be….

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The Pride of Yantai, Shandong Province

Posted on March 30, 2006 by Meg

Before I came to China, my only experience with the wordforeigner was the first few seconds of an old song and Stick shouting “The pride of Rochester, New York!”

In Yantai, though, it may as well be my name. When I walk through town, I am constantly greeted with “Hello! Hello! Lao wei!” I’ve been told many times that it’s not rude, but I can’t imagine the equivilent “NI HAO! HEY CHINA MAN!” going over too well at home. Then again, I grew up in Montclair, NJ and then went to college in Amherst, MA, so I could pass a tribe of mutant pygmies on the street and just wish them a good morning.

Yesterday, as I was walking to my school, a young man shouted “Hello!” I waited for him to add “Lao wei!” so that I could give my customary response, which is to say in very slow and painstaking Mandarin “Hello, I am an American teacher.” But instead, he said, in very slow and painstaking English:

“Welcome to China!”

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The English Channel

Posted on March 29, 2006 by Meg

CCTV 9, the English channel on the Chinese television, recently covered the Ukrainian election, in which two of the candidates are named Victor, without making a single joke. Come on, that’s just bad news reporting. It’s like not saying “into the Frey” when talking about the fallout from A Million Little Pieces. At least the headlines are sometimes inadvertantly funny. I liked the oddly ambiguous “Bird Flu in Turkey”, but “American VP Shot While Hunting a Friend” is the best.

There is one unfortunately named anchor, Wang Dong. I don’t know if he’s a good reporter, or even if he speaks English, because whenever he speaks I start to giggle uncontrollably. This is the type of mature action which makes me an excellent teacher candidate.

And the news itself is fascinating. There’s never a mention of an oil spill, just an announcement 3 or 4 weeks later that the clean-up efforts are 15% above projection. Those crazy idiots at the EU have recently been persecuting poor Chinese shoe exporters with so-called dumping tariffs. There are lovely traditional festivals celebrated all over China, and Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania.

They also really like bizarre panel discussions. The interviewer says things like “Tonight we have a calligraphy artist from Kyoto. Ms. Keiko, how does your work relate to the Japanese dumping of chemical weapons in China at the end of the second world war?” The other night was an interview with Neil MacGregor of the British Museum, because the British Museum knew that I would be in the area, so they loaned their ancient art collection to Beijing. Anyway, the interveiwer wanted to know about the “interesting phenomenon” of having the Roman artifacts constantly on display, while the Chinese scrolls are in so-called conservation for nine months of the year. He blinked a few times, and then tried, with exquisite British politeness, to explain that bronze is sturdier than paper.

I can’t turn CCTV 9 off, though. It’s the only news in English, and I’m playing Bird Flu Bingo.

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