I just read a great article on Xinhua. It is a rare example of self criticism, even if it's ultimate theme is still nationalism.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/31/content_3706442.htm
One of my favorite lines has got to be"


"Other bad habits listed in the report include spitting, littering, violation of traffic regulations, and jostling passengers on buses. City managers worry these uncivil behaviors will also bring shame to the capital or even to the nation if exposed to foreigners in 2008."

Of course, all of this begs the question what about to the people living here? Don't they count for anything? Why should I be forced to repress my urge to vomit whenever the guy at the next table decides to loudly hork up phlegm and spit it on the floor of the restaurant, or, in the case of tonight's dinner, the school cafeteria.

Sadly, this just highlights how, despite the repeated claims I hear from Beijingers and other Chinese that Beijing is a cultural city, I have yet to see any sign of civility. People here are so confident of their own superiority that they are not even embarassed when they make their child deficate on the sidewalk in broad daylight. It does not occur to them that this might not be a common practice elsewhere in the world. Afterall, China is a country with a long history and a great civilisation, how could barbarians be more civilised?

Another great example of this is one that I have only relatively recently discovered. One of the recorded announcements on the subway can be traslated as "careing for people is our Chinese race's culture, please give your seat to old, or sick passengers...". Unsurprisingly, whereas every other announcement is given in both Chinese and English (or, more accurately Chinese and Chinglish), this announcement is only in Chinese.

The reality is that most Chinese are one generation or less off the farm. Any cultural education they have recieved has been by the communists which means it was either Mao's cult of personality mixed with communism, socialism, or just plain nationalism. As the government continues to be repressive, general culture can not move freely into the public sphere as anything other than nationalism, xenophobia or the fluffy sentimental quasi-fantasy world of historical dramas. This has not only given Chinese people a strange sense of superiority/inferiority vis a vis foreigners, it has also given people a strange sense of their own culture. In my experience, people like to talk about "Chinese culture" in such general terms as to not say anything at all like "Chinese culture is very important" or "Chinese culture is very old". I don't know how many people have asked me if I was interested in Chinese culture but when asked a specific question can only say that they themselves are not experts.

But I am straying from the point of my blog...

today I taught a class of grade 1 students. It was remarkably fun. All I had to do was keep playing games the whole time and the class just went like magic. Just like that I made 200 kuai. I will talk to them tomorrow about whether I can get on there full time for one month. My guess is that they will say no, but they said they are in a tight spot now so I might just be able to get away with it. If I could, I would be making more money for just playing with kids.

Exams on wednesday... I should study...

Marc

A fun but unproductive weekend.

Last week was busy. I worked tuesday through friday and on thursday I had a job interview aswell. The company I work for, Modern English, is having a big student recruitment drive so they are putting on demo classes pretty much every day at a few locations. I was lucky enough to be looking for work at the same time as they were looking for teachers so I got the call. The demo classes were ok. I don't know that they were actually that great to be honest because I don't think a lot of people signed up. I guess the important thing is that I had fun.

The job interview was ok. It was good in that they offered me the job, but not so good in that I don't know if I want it. The problem is that the job is teaching grade 1 kids... not exactly my dream students. The other problem is that I would have to sign a contract until January and I would be forbidden from taking time off. As I am planning on traveling in December, this is the real dealbreaker. Nevertheless, tomorrow I will go substitute a class for them. They offered me cash, and I did not want to refuse.

Even though I worked 5 days in the last week, I am still hardly making any money. The hourly rate is good but I have just been working 1.5 hours at a time. This is the worst way to work because it means that I lose about 3 hours if you include the commute time as nothing in Beijing is truely convienient. My goal is to make about 1000 per week while at the same time keeping my expenses down to about 30 per day. This way, I can just bank my wages and live off of the pittance given to me by the communist party.

I had my regular student again today. On the way, I thought I would be late so I sent him a text message. He replied saying that he would also be late. In the event, I arrived on time and he arrived about 15 minutes late. Next time I should just not send the text message so that he will feel guilty about keeping me waiting. Able, his name, is a nice guy. He is very much a middle class 30 something Chinese guy. He is relatively aware of the world outside China and he has even left the country twice. He is also well educated and seems to be a real expert in internet provision and related technologies which is his industry. It is people like him that make me think that China really does have a bright future.

It is Rae's birthday on tuesday. Knowing this, I went online to buy her some flowers. Unfortunately, I did not pay attention to the delivery date when I ordered them so they will come today instead of tuesday. It is a stupid mistake, but I don't think it will be a big deal. Certainly much better than forgetting her birthday outright.

Speaking of Rae, I am starting to wonder about going back to Vancouver. I know that this is what I wanted when I decided it, but now I am starting to wonder. While I am sure that I want to leave Beijing when this course is done, Vancouver is just not that easy to live in without money or a pre-arranged job. While I am happy to know that many of my friends will still be around in January when I am to get back, I am just worried that life without a social context such as school might not be that fun.

To be honest, I am also not looking forward to the serious drop in my standard of living compared to my time in university; I will not be able to afford a downtown penthouse on an English teacher's salary. At best, I could get a shared apartment in the West End but more likely I will be forced out of downtown all together. If this is the case, I will take a look at Chinatown or Gastown, although I guess neither is a very pleasant place to live. I can't imagine that the downton eastside drug problem has been cleaned up in my absence.

We had a debate in my Chinese class on friday. The topic (not exactly a resoultion) was whether or not a good deed has a reward. I, of course, was the leader of opposition benches. I was so excited about the whole thing that I dressed up with a tie and tweed jacket. As expected, most of my classmates were not good at all. Fully half the speeches in this 3 on 3 debate were focused on one personal anecdote and noting more. Luckily, only one of these came from our side. In the unstructured debate that followed, which was more like a moderated discussion, one Indonesian girl on the other side took out her Bible and read passages as evidence. In the end the teacher gave us the win.

Interestingly for me, the substance of their case, as far as I could glean, was that good people raise good kids who also do good things and get rewarded. I could not figure out how this even fit into the discussion so I did not really touch it at all. However, it made me think that family lines are probably much more important in Asia than they are in North America.

Midterms are coming up but I haven't really studied much for them yet. To be quite honest, I don't know why I should bother. I guess since I am here, I might as well do my best, but I find myself resisting for some reason. Either way, I am happy to be settled into my class and I am very happy that my professor has taken my suggestions to heart.

Until next time,

Marc

I really like teaching.

I don't know whether it is the attention, the feeling of importance or the pay, but there is just something about teaching a class that makes me happy. After I teach a good class I don't notice that the air is terrible. I don't notice that the bus is falling apart or that my dorm does not have heat, I just feel satisfied.

I have been teaching demo classes for the last two days at Modern English. As Rae is coming in December and we are planning on traveling, I have been trying to work more and spend less to save up some money. One of the jobs I picked up was a set of demo classes at the head office of Modern English (ME). They are really fun because it is my job to get people excited about learning English with ME. It is also cool because after the shortened lesson (that is always about hobbies and interests) I have interviews to evaluate the English levels of individual students. This is fun because it is always interesting to see people from many different walks of life. It is also cool because a lot of the people I have been meeting are students, who I should really be meeting more of but have not been able to bring myself to meet in normal situations.

I met two interesting students today. They came together, both are graduate students at Renmin university. One is studying international relations. Of course, in the evaluation I asked him what he studied and of course he answered China's relations with the rest of the world. When I asked him to tell me something about it he repeated, in typical fashion, the party line about how China's relations with everyone are getting better and about how China and the US should cooperate more especially in fields such as terrorism. Here was a guy who was doing a PhD in international relations who's analytical abilities did not extend further than the People's daily. Granted we didn't talk much but bringing up terrorism? Hello, the world has moved on. Even America has moved on and they were the ones hit! The next girl was his friend. She was studying "Scientific Socialism". Sorry to any socialists reading this but I actually had to supress I laugh when I heard it. When I asked her what her favorite Marx book was she answered "The Communist Manifesto" and again, she repeated the party line about the bright future for "socialism with Chinese charactaristics". On the plus side at least she recognised that there were class struggles in China today and that they were getting worse and not better. Of course, her answer to this was again "socialism with Chinese charactaristics".

Apart from this, life is as usual. I went out drinking on friday night with Neal, Chris, Alex, Catlyn and thier friend. We went to Pure because they had a ladies night. I guess clubs are just not that much fun if you are not on the market because I got bored pretty quickly. We didn't stay that long before going to another bar next door to see Catlyn's friend from Vancouver do some hip hop freestyling. It was pretty cool, and very Vancouver. The rest of the weekend I spent too much time on the internet, as usual. I did manage to get out a bit, but because I am trying not to spend any money, I didn't do anything super fun. Also, as Neal is getting used to living in China, we don't walk as much anymore. I think this is perhaps worse for him because he has not seen as much of the city as I have and he is also leaving before me. I just hope that he can get out enough to say that he has seen Beijing by the time he goes back.

School has been the same. I guess I should start going to sleep earlier because I have a very hard time getting to class on time or enjoying myself while I am there. I know that part of the blame lies squarely with the textbooks which are still boring and propagandistic. I guess another part is now that I am used to the teacher and the class, i am not trying anymore. I know I don't need to or want to impress her and that anyway lateness is not particularly serious. On the plus side, it seems as if my teacher has actually changed her teaching style a bit. In addition to reading aloud as a class and repeating sentences we are having more student-teacher interaction and role playing. She has even stopped making us repeat the text until we have memorized it. I think these are major positive steps.

More later,

Marc

I have been having a good week.

Last week, out of nowhere, my professor sent out an email to the whole class asking us what we thought about the class and for advice on how to impvove things. Of course I eagerly took this chance to tell her that reciting propaganda doesn't make us learn. I said that we need more class participation and better teaching materials. The next day, I could already see the changes. Even though in subsequent days she did revert to using the reading aloud as a class method, there were new parts added to the lesson plan including role playing, paraphrasing, and asking questions to the class. That said, the class still leaves much to be desired.

The second, and probably the most important, factor relating to my increased happiness resulted from a conversation I had with Rae. I said that I would be unable to go back to Canada in December and that I would stay here until the end of the school term. She, of course, was quite upset. However, after thinking about it for a while, she decided that she would come here and visit me in December. This conversation also crystalized my plans to leave Beijing and return to Vancouver when the semester is over. Suddenly, I was not deprived for not seeing my girlfriend. Also, and perhaps just as important, all of the annoyances of China were now just temporary. As much as I hate the spitting, the air, the way the people think, the propagandistic media, the uglyness, the government in general, the toilets, the rudeness of the people, the horrible state of the roads and sidewalks, etc... they all just became temporary and thus much more tolerable. With a firmish deadline set for my time here, I might even begin to cherish some of the more agreable aspects of this place like being rich.

The final reason is that I have started working again, although only as a substitute so far. This has renewed my sense of purpose, even if it is a non-core activity. It has also gotten me out of the house, and given me the prospect of not being so fucking broke anymore (being poor, or even just not rich, in China is not fun at all). Working also gives me a context in which to meet interesting and engaged Chinese people, who are a hell of a lot better than the ones at my university. Hopefully I will be able to pick up some more classes in the near furture so that I can save money for when Rae comes here.

Of course, my decision now leaves me with even more uncertainties. For instance, I do not know what I will do or where I will live in Vancouver. Although I have some ideas, it will be hard to find a decent job in that city. Also, apartments are expensive relative to the wage I am likely to earn so I will almost certainly be unable to live downtown or in other desireable neighbourhoods. But, I will cross that bridge when I get there.

In other news, today the propaganda rad declared that there is demorcacy in China (no, they are not talking about Taiwan), just not the same democracy that they have in any other country. That is that there is a democratic dictatorship of the people - a doublethink title if I have ever heard one. It went on to explain how instead of having multi party competition like in other countries, they have multi party cooperation. They failed to mention that all of the parties are simply there to toe the line of the Party and to deflect the criticism that China is a dictatorship. I really can't get over this government. The worst thing is that most of the Chinese people who read it will either accept it or not care enough to doubt it.

Anyone reading this, please read some of the shit that comes out of the mouthpieces of the party. As an example, try a google news search on "China". First all of the different news sources such as the People's Daily, China Daily, Xinhua, CPI and the different regional sites will all have similar headlines. They will also have the same editorial perspective and in any remotely contriversial cases, they will all blatantly ignore the same relevant details that might be unflattering to the government or against the official party line. The sad thing is that most Chinese people don't really know that the governemnt is controling the internet and the media in general. The result is a whole massive population who believe this militant nationalistic propaganda that is fed to them their entire lives. I know I have said it before, but it makes this country a much worse place to live both because it is impossible to watch or read the news, but also because the people are so horribly insular, myopic and naitonalistic.

Marc

Today is Yom Kippur. I am fasting.

The air was bad yesterday. Visibility was less than one kilometer. The air stank, it made my lungs hurt, it made my eyes hurt. I went for a walk with Neal through some rather depressing outskirts. I was not shocked. It was much like Pingdingshan or any other second rate Chinese city. The sights and smells remind me that China is a developing country in that it has a long road of development ahead of it.

Last night I went to a health club in the business district of Beijing to attend Kol Nidre services. The crowd was mostly American of various ages. To my surprise there were quite a few people there, perhaps as many as 200. Among these there were several Jewish men with Chinese wives and mixed children. As I did not attend the 150 kuai dinner beforehand, I did not really get to meet people, but perhaps today will be better. Being there reminded me of the "hotness" of China and Beijing right now. Here was a whole crowd of foreigners, and just one small subset of foreigners at that, who were all coming to live and work in Beijing. It was also good to get some sense of community. That, wherever I am in the world, I can always find other Jews with whom to spend the High Holidays.

Well, the weather is better today... maybe I should enjoy it...

Marc

The air was bad today and class was boring.

I had a reading class today which consisted of more propaganda. The story went that there was a Chinese girl who went to Australia as a foreign student. While she was there she became the domestic help for this couple. The couple had a bad relationship... To make a long story short the husband asked the Chinese girl to steal from the wife for him, she said that it was against her culture, the husband got punished and the Chinese girl was the hero... Such a pile of crap. Decadent Westerners have no values anymore, it is great that we have the Chinese around as a moral compass...

The next class, well more like the next lesson in the same class, was devoted entirely to reading aloud. We read a story that was about as asinine as the earlier one only this time we got to say it out loud as a class. Two hours of reading aloud as a class and repeating after the teacher later it was finally time for lunch.

Lunch was sushi with a large group of people from my class. However, although we sat together, there was very little inter-group communication. For the most part, I talked with my Italian friend Marco while the Indonesians talked amongst themselves. After lunch, I continued to talk with Marco for some time until I went home and started to escape into the internet.

I was reading Wikipedia when Neal called and invited me out to dinner. We went for a walk through the terrible air, past the fourth ring road and into "China's Silicon Valley" where we walked through rows of vegetable hawking street venders and cart-top baked sweet potato sellers until we hit a dirty street with some decent looking restaurants. We settled on a Sichuan place where we had great Shuizhuyu (fish cooked with chilies in oil... lots and lots of chilies and oil...) and talked about Canadian politics. We came to the conclusion that, despite whatever problems we might have as a country, it is a great thing when the critizisms of government policies revolve around them delivering better than expected government surpluses.

After I got home I did some homework. The same boring crap that keeps me so inspired. Then, my roommate pointed something out to me which I had never really noticed before. That our internet here is special. It is special in that we, as foreign students, have the option of accessing websites from outside China. Chinese students do not have this option. As an experiment, I unchecked the "visit foreign sites" box and started to look around. What I found was that in addition to the blocking of the BBC, there was no google, no hotmail, MSN messanger did not work (although skype did), and the only website I could think of to visit was www.chinadaily.com.cn (although I don't recomend it). They treat their university students worse than we treat our prisoners.

These are the students going to the Language and Culture university. They are the ones who were looking for more contact with foreigners. Instead, they live in a completely different world that happens to occupy the same space. There is no great Chinese-Foreign exchange of ideas and cultures here. There is plenty of Foreign-Foreign exchanges, but this should not matter to the ones paying me and thousands of other foreign students twice a worker's wage for studying their language. The fear, or perhaps the arrogance, of the Chinese leadership is encumbering the whole purpose of this university.

As a final note, my internet got cut off just now. I am writing this offline and hope to post it as soon as I can. The interesting coincidence is that I was cut off in the middle of an msn conversation where I was talking about the militant nationalism of this country. Further, the network is still working, it is just denying me access... lets see if rebooting solves the problem.

--Update... my internet was off for about 15 hours until it suddenly started again. Interestingly, it cut out in the middle of an msn chat about the Chinese government. Could be a coincidence.

The holiday is over.

It never really was much of a holiday as did not go anywhere. I probably should have considering that it was the only real time off I am going to get until the end of my course, but without money or friends to travel with, it could not have been that good anyway.

In the event, I spent most of my holiday between catching up with my good friend the internet and further exploring this part of Beijing with Neal. On the internet front, I got skype up and running and so was able to talk to Rae a few times, Rachel, and my parents. This was nice because it had been some time since I had heard their voices.

In this time, I also got to check google news six times per day for anything new of interest. Through this I found something fun. If you do a google news search for "china" there are three kinds of hits. There is news from Chinese outlets, news from foreign outlets and news from both. Not surprisingly, the tone of these three types are different. When the Chinese report about themselves, it is almost exclusively in positive tones with lots of talk about "China's rise" and economic development. The foreign articles are often criticizing the government for their internet policy or talking of the existing imbalances in the Chinese economy or society. Finally, the only issues that are covered by both Chinese and international sites are positive statements about facts, figures and important news releases. Unfortunately, Chinese people who do not get their news in English only have access to the first category of articles as any foreign based Chinese language news site is blocked.

Last night I went out for dinner with Alex and Catlyn. They have just returned from a visa-extending trip down to Hong Kong. We had a good time talking about how amazing that city is. A few beers later and we got into a cab and went to Banana, the hottest Chinese club in Beijing. That place is intense. There are two lazers, huge light displays and a massive wall that acts as a screen with multicoloured lights making different patterns. All of this in a very foggy, relatively small and intensely packed space. The music, mostly of the hard-house and misc. variety is very loud and often ineptly mixed. At one point, a nearly naked Middle-Eastern man was lowered in cage over the middle of the dance floor to dance for the enjoyment of the audience. Unfortunately, there were not as many of these such performances as the last time I went to Banana and so we didn't get the full Chinese club experience. After we had all that we could handle, we caught a cab and headed home.

Today I started classes again. The text we did talked about how, in Chinese cultre, people respect their elders. On Chinese busses, people will get up and give their seats to older people. The teacher then went ahead and explained to us that in "foreign culture" this is not the case. A fact she seemed quite sure of despite having never left China. Class ened with a demoralised and much diminished (people must still be on vacation) class doing a 30 minute "repeat after the tape" session.

At lunch I ran into my roommate's friend Eagle (yes, like the bird...). Again, he wanted to talk about the difference between Chinese and "foreign" culture. I explained to him that there is nowhere in the world that is called "waiguo" (literally 'outside China') and if you want to talk about other countries you should specify which ones. After explaining to me that he considered Japan and pretty much all of Asia to be essentially Chinese, we settled on using "the West" as a point of comparason. We ended lunch with a tentitive agreement to become language exchange partners. I will do what I can to avoid this because he always steers the conversation to English and when I respond in Chinese he will criticise either my tones or my grammar. Perhaps next time I see him I should mock his accent along with his myopic view of the world.

To all the readers of my blog. As this is blocked in China, I have no way of reading the comments you might have posted. If you wish to email me, please do as I am always happy to hear from you.

Marc

I finally have the internet in my room.

I guess I am now settled into my new life here at Beijing Language and Culture University. I can't say it is that bad. The university is certainly more pleasant than other parts of Beijing, here there is definatly the feeling of being in a campus environment. On the other hand, I still don't know what I am doing here. Although I have started to enjoy my life more and I have had some interesting experiences in the last weeks, few of these are directly related to being in China. Let me begin.

I am not accustomed to my class. There are 19 students, of which an average of 15 show up on any given day. The professor is a 30 year old Chinese woman with lots of enthusiasm but little teaching experience or familiarity with teaching theory. As a result, every day she prepares very nice, professional looking powerpoints full of sentences in Chinese for us to read aloud together as a class. We also do varying amounts of homework that usually consists of workbook exercises or writing short essays on corney topics such as "my responsabilities". In addition to her, we also have one other teacher for four hours a week. She is an older woman with much more teaching experience and a very personable demeanour. She teaches us reading by having us read short propagandistic stories for comprehention first, and then aloud individually. With both teachers, it is quite evident that they have never learned a foreign language as they seem oblivious of our weaknesses in learning. Apart from that, the classes are well paced and at the appropriate level for me to learn.

Outside of class, I can not say that my life is terribly exicting. First, the pace of the class requires me to spend time studying every day. Secondly, as I have not made that many friends, my social options are limited anyway. I have been spending a lot of time talking about China, Africa, and other things with my South African roommate (his stories are very interesting) and about China with the handfull of associates (one level below friends in my heirarchy) I have managed to meet.

The biggest event that has happened for me lately is the arrival of Neal. Neal is a friend of mine from back in Vancouver who I met though Milan. Before he got here, he had been working up in the interior of BC and before that, living the life of a ski bum up at Whistler. I guess he had been inspired by my stories of China and decided to come here for himself.

At first, things were a bit rough. He was staying with my sister's friends Catlyn and Alex, but he didn't seem to establish much of a relationship with them. After a week their patience for the stranger crashing on the couch wore thin and they asked him to leave. This spurred him to enlist my help in finding an apartment. After two days of moderate searching, he found a room in a shared apartment in the neighbourhood I live for RMB1500 per month. However, despite having housing, he is still quite lost in China and has been unable to effectively search for employment. This situation is unsustainable and hopefully with be resolved soon.

By far the most interesting events in my life lately happened on thursday and friday nights. On thursday, my roommate invited me out with his friends to go have dinner at a Japanese restaurant and for karaoke afterwards. The dinner was super fun. The dinner was mostly students at BLCU and the largest group among them was Japanese. Lucky for Neal, the lingua franca at the table was English except for the drinking chants which were all Japanese. As the night progressed, there were too many "Hashimotoseko"s going around and I got really drunk. So, rather than stay for karaoke, I stumbled home and went to bed. Neal, on the other hand, passed out in the karaoke room until 4am when everyone went home.

The next night, Chris, my American friend, invited me to dinner with his friends. We went to Chaoyang district, in the Dongzhimen area to a Beijing style restaurant (which are actually quite rare). This time, the crowd was almost entirely young Western and Indian graduates who were doing internships or entry level jobs in various sectors in Beijing. Most of them were members of Aisec, a business student's club that helps to arrange internships. This time, although we did not drink as much, the conversation was more interesting as I queried many newly arrived people about thier opinions of China (almost all were quite positive) and talked about the prospects for India with some very inteligent and elequant Indans. After dinner, we went to a bar where we had some more great "young and international" conversation about politics, China, and the best cities in the world.

The next night, I went out to Sanlitun with Neal, Alex and Catlyn. It was good times as we talked about life back home and met some nice people during the course of bar-hopping.

After the experience of these three nights I realised that right now Beijing has a real position as a hub in the international upwardly mobile youth demographic. This makes the city a very exciting place to live as there is the opportunity to interact with young people from all over the world who are doing interesting and exciting things. On the other hand, it is sobering because most of these people are here just because China is "hot" right now. Many of them speak little or no Chinese and are not much worse off for it. Further, throughout those three nights, there were no local Chinese present. There were always overseas Chinese who had come to either learn the language or work, but there were not any locals. The language and/or culture gap between locals and the globally conscious upwardly mobile young students and professionals is still evidently too big for there to be any real social interaction.

Right now it is the national holiday so everyone gets a week off. Most people, including my roommate, Alex and Catlyn, and Chris, have gone traveling however as I have neither money nor travel partners, I am still here in Beijing.

I also now have skype so if you want to talk to me, you can always add me and give me a ring.

Marc