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Yanling and China Readings

10/5/2016

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It's one month into my third year in a city I thought I'd live in for no more than two years, tops. We just received a new schedule for the rest of the term but otherwise I find I'm feeling pretty settled in. A lot has happened in the past month as things get sorted out and people meet and catch up. Every year, I promise myself I'll go out more and so far I seem to be doing good on that. I have no intention of becoming a boozier person, that takes even more recovery time than just hanging out with groups of people for one night but I do want to make sure I'm spending more time with other human beings. I'm not great with people, but I'll keep trying.

I finally made my way to Yanling with a group of other foreign teachers who teach in Zhuzhou. Every year, the city puts on a few events where foreign teachers go to teach at a school where students do not have a foreign teacher leading an oral English class for a day. This year was the first time they did an overnight trip. We went sightseeing for half a day in Yanling and taught classes the next morning after the opening ceremony and requisite speeches and photos. I was excited to see Emperor Yan's mausoleum, though being the important figure he is I doubt that this is the only place with claims to him.
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Entrance to Yandiling, Emperor Yan's mausoleum
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Large temple dedicated to Yandi
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One of many miniatures in a garden
None of it looked very old, but that's not so strange here despite China's 5,000 years of history and culture. For one, wooden buildings require more maintenance than other materials and the Cultural Revolution has also taken its toll. The reconstruction, rebuilding, and refurbishing that comes with old sites in China is a product of history in its own way. Yet Chinese culture seems to find a way to make its comeback. Emperor Yan/Shennong is still an important figure as the one who brought agriculture, pharmacological knowledge (via trying plants out on himself), and the use of tea as medicine to China. As in Zhuzhou, there were many images of him with grains or plant life, though in the temple his accomplishments seemed to further include music and pottery. Perhaps it's the way he's carved into the walls that remind me of red and black Greek pottery scenes or that his name "Yan Di" means "Flame Emperor" but I often find myself thinking of him as something like a Prometheus figure lately. An ancient figure who brings key developments and knowledge to a civilization that radically changes things for thousands of years.

Being the town where Emperor Yan's bones are kept, Yanling had appropriately agrarian names throughout. Our super fancy hotel (I guess the combination of city officials and foreign guests made it impossible for the organizers to look for anything less than Yanling's best) was on a road that ran next the "Mi Xiang", "Rice River". When a couple of foreign teachers and I went out for a walk with a local teacher in the evening, she explained that the name came from the color of the water which resembled water after it's been used to wash rice. There was also a small market on a dirt lot nearby our hotel too which looked like it was selling local grown snacks. All in all, it was a good time. The fresh air was a welcome change, Yanling was pleasant, and students were slow to warm but full of questions.

I also had the opportunity to pop in and say hi to some of my former students when their school held a sports day on our school's large field. Last year, each class was asked to dress in the national costume of a different country. This year, they were asked to dress as different minority groups of China. As someone who grew up in the American racial context and has a background in liberal arts, I do find it problematic though I realize too that for my students it's just what they were asked to do for a school event. I have to admit, I was really impressed when a few of my students rode down the track on real ponies with "Kalinka" playing in the background. It was good to catch up with them and remind them to be nice to the new teacher working there this year.

Aside from school and travels, I've been sitting down to think about where to go from here. I'm not unhappy and I've grown a lot from this. Public speaking doesn't make me sick like it used to, I'm more comfortable with the idea that it's OK for me to take up space and make noise as much as anyone else in this world. Teaching here the past few years has helped me see more clearly all the ways in which my lack of confidence has really affected me. When you're leading a classroom, you really have to remember your power as a teacher which is something I've struggled with at times as someone who generally has been most comfortable at the back of the room or as someone who would rather write an essay than stand and speak in front of a room of people. Which is partly why I came. China could continue to offer challenges, but because I'm finding I'm more capable than I gave myself credit for I can't help asking myself: "What else could I try?"

As it stands now, I have a list on the fridge of things that have crossed my mind in further studies and other lines of work. I've also started up a notebook with little tabs as I dig into these things further and ask myself what it is about these things that appeal to me and what I might contribute in the future as a result of these decisions. There is, admittedly, the part of me that continues to feel rather lost and think "Whatever it is, it's a life" but I'm coming to better accept that lost is everyone's condition to some degree. Just keep moving. No promises any which way, but it's something. The weather is cooling off so I suppose I'll have time to sit down with a hot cup of Tie Guan Yin/ hot chocolate/instant coffee/Earl Grey and mull it over during the coming months. I've also got a few China related goals like building up my Chinese since I got lazy last year and paying a visit to Hangzhou, Taipei, Putuoshan, and a few other places. I wouldn't mind trying to find my way to Taishan either.

I've been reading more China travel books lately. I finished Ella Maillart's "The Forbidden Journey", which was already really interesting as an account of traveling around 1930's China from Beijing to Kashmir but especially so for Maillart's rather anthropological attention to the people she meets and the things she sees. Her travel companion, Peter Fleming, wrote a book of his own which is stylistically quite different. Where Maillart was happy to stay a few extra days and look around, Fleming largely wanted to be on the move. Fleming's writing, I can't help noticing, is brisk and exciting but since I read Maillart first I can't help feeling it's short on detail (but as someone who has taken a number of writing classes and learned the importance of writing what is needed and no more, it's not a move I necessarily find wrong, it just takes some adjustment). I grouch about 30 hours on a slow train from Hunan to Sichuan, while those two made it across the country with train, camel, horse, and cart. Strangely, even from this distance about 80 years later there are some things that are painfully familiar as a traveler in China. I've also decided to come back and finish the last third of Marco Polo. I had to put it down because I was sick of reading the same opening line about Saracens and Moslems over and over again and how many places seem to have a tradition of letting guests from far away sleep with their women. Still, I can't help seeing it as something of an ur-text for those who travel and write about China and it has been pretty interesting to slowly work through all these layers of China books from Marco Polo to Ella Maillart to Paul Theroux to Peter Hessler to Jen Lin-Liu and other more contemporary writers. A different little slice of life in this country in different periods. I think of the 10 different layers you can see when you go to visit the site where Troy used to stand, but I'm creating it through travel accounts inside my head instead.
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Slow Trains of China

3/12/2015

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In my last year of college I got to hear travel writer Diccon Bewes discuss his new book Slow Train to Switzerland and discuss Switzerland's important role in developing modern tourism. At that time, I didn't realize that I would be in China eyeing the price of slow train rides across the country but now after having spent a month on the move through trains, buses, boats, and a plane (and having passed through all of Guangzhou's train stations) I've been reflecting on what I've learned since October. I also picked up Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster. At times I'm impressed by the depth of his reading, then I think he's a bit frustrating as he hides his identity from other tourists while writing some biting things about them (though I too have had my moments where I got a bit frustrated with other foreigners here in China). His voice is quite different from Bewes, whose worked I enjoyed for its detail and humor in writing about Switzerland, but perhaps I can partly attribute that to the subject matter. At times I've struggled with Riding the Iron Rooster because it wasn't immediately obvious to me that this was written during the 1980s. Barnes and Noble put its publication information as 2006 but my suspicions were somewhat aroused by the descriptions of urban living and what really made me look up the date of writing was when he mentioned listening to the BBC through his radio and the days leading up to news of Chernobyl. Some things were certainly familiar enough, the loud build up to someone spitting in public for one but until I had seen a book review from 1988 I just felt that the two of us had seen totally different Chinas. Now I know, given the span of time between 1988 and 2015 the China Theroux traveled around by train for one year and the city I live in are different worlds. One of the teachers pointed out Shennong Town once and told me that none of the big shopping centers, the park, the square or any of that had been there 10 years ago. 

I'm not through with it yet, I've just gotten past the part where he rides the Iron Rooster and makes his way to Xinjiang accompanied by a man who has been appointed to stay with him throughout his trip. I remember reading once in Lonely Planet's guide to travel writing that Theroux was a master of using dialogue to bring readers into a place. I have found the conversations he brings into his work to be interesting, but often I think the questions he asks are a bit strange. I've been looking forward to starting each new chapter for what it might reveal but at times I can't help agreeing with some of the reviews I've read about Theroux's condescension. The people he meets are fascinating and the information he brings in to contextualize some of the conversations he has is well woven into the book, but his descriptions of some of these people aren't terribly flattering either. Maybe I can better form my thoughts on the book as a whole when I've finished reading. There's something else he wrote that's supposed to be his best work, I've been thinking of looking for his other writings to get a fuller sense of the kind of traveler and the kind of writer he is. I've also downloaded Pico Iyer's Video Nights in Kathmandu onto my nook. I feel like I've heard the name enough to wonder what he wrote about and as it's part of a collection of writings on the far East it may be relevant. I have to admit, seeing Zhuzhou mentioned in Theroux's book has partly won me over to Riding the Iron Rooster. I'm sad to say though that thus far it's only been a train stop where he said goodbye to a man getting off a train for a connection to Changsha.

I'll be getting on a train (火车 huo che in Chinese, literally meaning fire cart and I remember it as one of the first words I learned in a book my grandpa gave me about reading Chinese) tomorrow evening. WorldTeach is holding a mid-service conference and though the bus station is next to the school my first instinct in traveling is to book a train ticket. Maybe it's the result of being in Switzerland for four years. So, it's off to Changsha for a weekend where I'll be doing a short presentation/leading a discussion during the mid-service conference. It's not terribly exciting. It's about effectively opening and closing your lessons but I've been surprised to hear others talk about how they're not sure about how exactly to close up a class and organized lesson plans have become a strength of mine. I guess it helps that in public speaking we were asked to do something similar to the lesson planning template that we were given during orientation. Basically, we had to outline what we wanted to say in full sentences and write in any gestures we would use so that we could both give a clear speech with deliberate movements and speak more naturally than if we were reading a thick essay. Hopefully, I can be of some help to someone but as of right now I'm a little nervous with making sure that I am where I need to be when I need to be there. I also don't want to be overly redundant when I know I'll be in a room full of people with as much teaching experience as I have so I'd rather talk about what we've all tried and some of the procedures we've developed.

In news about Zhuzhou, I saw sun and parts of blue sky for the first time in two weeks today. I was told it will still be quite cold for at least another month and then Hunan will once again turn into China's oven and the walls will swell with heat and humidity. We had English Corner for the first time this term and it's quite different from last term. More students, more formalized, more observations from other teachers coming and today our lesson plan for 40 minutes had to be changed to accommodate the visiting parents and school board members who are obviously highly important guests. So to make sure they saw us in action and saw what the school had to offer, we were told that class couldn't just end at 5pm. We had to continue holding English corner until we were told to stop and all the groups had had a chance to peek inside. It was a bit frustrating to have to think of something to do for an extra 30 minutes, but what school wouldn't want to show themselves at their best? And even more so in a culture where displaying that best and maintaining "face" is such a big concern. There's truth to the cynical view that we're here to add to the school's prestige because it's a private school that also has native English speakers that students can speak to, but at the same time I haven't felt overly cynical about that because I've found teachers quite willing to help whenever I've had questions. I think even with the greater presence of pomp and circumstance around certain school events such as the beginning of a new term or with greeting important guests to the school, the teachers are quite genuine in wanting to be better teachers and I guess in helping me that's also helping their students more fully take advantage of my presence. Is our school proud of having foreigners? Yes. Do we feel frustrated at times by last minute requests, teachers who keep their distance because they don't speak English well or speak it at all so they're not wholly comfortable sitting with us, and the knowledge that as oral English is not a zhongkao or gaokao subject our classes don't take quite the same priority that other classes on the test will? Yes. But from stories I've heard about the situations of others I'm in very good hands. I've never once felt that I wasn't and though there were problems with my visa in October, I saw how hard WorldTeach, JingYan, and the Hunan Dept. of Education worked to ensure that we were able to continue. Which was great because it would have broke my heart to be turned away a second time and not only that, face difficulty in coming to China later because of an innocent mistake. I think WorldTeach is taking applications for next year so if I want to come back to Hunan through WorldTeach I will need to act fast. As it is, I feel quite content either going home with my experiences, the better sense of self, and the greater trust in myself I sense I've developed or in coming back and being a much more polished teacher with a better understanding of what to look out for.

It's interesting to think through all this now. I remember how it used to surprise when I'd hear about a Chinese-American that moved back to China or read something in a history about cases of families moving back. I'd heard so many times that the US presented so many opportunities that people gave up all kinds of things to come here so with that understanding, knowing that people went back surprised me and raised questions. Undoubtedly, there are still more opportunities to do as a you wish but I've also learned about the appeal of being someone who looks like 95% of the population of China. I guess for those who had the choice to stay or go, there was also value in being in a country where you weren't alien, in knowing that you are a Chinese person in China. Not promising that everyone gets to do anything they can dream of, but at the basic level of education I can say that you're more likely to get second chances for a college education if that is what you seek either for your own emotional and intellectual development or for the boost it gives to your earning potential. I've found myself remembering a professor who once said that Americans had no right to happiness, but that we did have a right to its pursuit. Before coming here, I read in guidebooks and heard from online sources that Asian-Americans would not be treated the same way as other foreigners in China. I remember phrases like "met with a mixture of admiration and resentment" and of being alone in a long lost home, of not being treated with the same reverence and excitement that other foreigners were treated to. I have yet to be met with said mixture of admiration and resentment (or I'm not in the loop enough to hear it) and as I've worked my way through books about China I've started to wonder about how many Chinese-Americans or Overseas Chinese as we're called in Chinese contribute to these travel resources. Is it just that we relate differently and that our take on China isn't quite the same as a number of other tourists? Is that why some guidebooks leave a special box on what to expect as a Chinese-American in China while some mention nothing of the changed relationship and perceptions of overseas Chinese in China? I think the only work of travel literature about China written in English by an Asian woman is To the People, Food is Heaven and I don't remember her mentioning anything about resentment in her book either. Then again, Hunan's history is a bit different from places such as Guangdong so if I spent more time down south it may be a different story. If anything, I've encountered curiosity and confusion that sometimes ends with "xinjiang ren ma?" as people put my bad Chinese together with my predominantly Asian face and arrive at the possibility that I come from Xinjiang province, the province in China with the most minority groups.

I've been thinking about a lot of things this week and I still haven't quite gotten over the shock of realizing I have no more than 13 weeks of teaching left. While asking myself what to do when this comes to a close is exciting, it's also going to be very tough to leave with everything I wanted to talk about and the students who have put up with my off days and my struggles. I know the colleges around here are frequently looking for foreigners to teach English so maybe I should start looking at that as an option for coming back, but I'm also open to the idea of working and saving to come back in a year or two. Who knows? I've heard different things about teaching college, that it's frustrating because they've passed the gaokao and don't feel the same obligation to come to class, that they are more willing to work with you because they don't have that same obligation to exams that they did in middle and high school, that they are serious students, that they have money and don't care...but I also know that all college students still have to pass the college English test regardless of their major so I imagine that adds some incentive to stay in English class. I have the experience now and am more open to the risk since I've discovered that compared to some who take on teaching jobs I was pretty well informed of the challenges before coming here. But I think that's why I encouraged to try for the job again, because I applied and made it clear that this was something I wanted to do with the full knowledge that living in another country is not easy and that my appearance could change the way locals interacted with me. Since I'm going to be in Changsha with all the other teachers and the field director, that might be a good time to start asking about the possibility of doing this again. I know I'd like to see more of Zhuzhou and all the changes that happen around me are fascinating. My Chinese still needs work and I'm always sensing how big this country and how much there is to it, and I've been enjoying the anonymity I have here that I clearly didn't get from men who shouted "Hey China!" from across the street. Not to mention, the ready availability of tea and teawares of varying quality. Sometimes I sense it's less the drinks themselves that interest me than the whole culture and ritual, the contemplation, and attention to detail. But of course, it doesn't hurt that all that comes with a hot drink when you've boiled the water to the right temperature, washed the leaves, brewed and re-brewed for a reasonable amount of time, watched the leaves unfurl and finally poured it into a cup consumption.

To tie things up here, I guess I'm just at a point where I can hear the slow trains of my time in China calling out the next stop and while I'm not super anxious, I am listening for the station I'll be getting off at for the next connection, whether that be another chance at teaching here or taking my new confidence to other places.
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    I'm a 3rd year WorldTeach volunteer.
    ​
    The views stated on this blog are mine and do not reflect the opinions or positions of Worldteach.

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