My Students

My Students

Friday night. Just cracked open a 航空, the local brew. It's not bad at all and comes in 590 ml bottles for about 20 cents US. 航空 (hangkong) means something like ‘aviation’ or more literally ‘navigating the sky’ and I suppose about three of them could send one 'navigating’ high enough before crashing. One or two is not quite enough but three is a bit too much if one has to get up early for work the next day. I've yet to try the local brandy that goes for a bit over 1 USD for about 250 ml. I will have to put that off till another Friday night. It's probably not suitable for weekday nights.

I just finished the first week of classes. I think things went quite well and I have to say that I was really very pleased with the students. I like them very much. They are serious, energetic, enthusiastic and quite willing to speak in class with a good level of English proficiency. The students I teach, except for one class of first year graduate students, are all sophomore English language majors. They are about 80% female, which is probably not unlike foreign language majors in the US. Thus, most are about 19 years old and I got a big laugh when I told them that I was in China before they were because I first came here 20 years ago.

This is a ‘normal’ university 师范大学, that is, primarily a teacher training college, so most of the students are heading toward being junior or senior high school teachers, but in fact they have a variety of career goals. Some want to be translators or interpreters or use their language skills for business, but whatever their career ambitions, I find them to be almost uniformly optimistic about the future and possessed of a faith that their hard work can pay off. I'm not sure how justified this optimism is, but it seems to be in rather sharp contrast to the outlooks of US students, who seem to me rightfully concerned about their futures—unless they are double majoring in Spanish and criminal justice and want to work for the Border Patrol.

Give me a moment as I open a second 航空. I've lost a few kg. since I came here, so it's ok.

The vast majority of the students are from Henan Province, but relatively few are from Zhengzhou, the capital and largest city. Most are from the smaller cities and towns or rural villages. Many are the children of farmers and workers and thus first-generation college. The next largest group would be the children of primary and secondary teachers, following in their parents’ footsteps. This makes me feel particularly close to them and I shared with them my own working class background and told them not to call me “Dr.” because where I grew up, doctors were people who set bones and cure sickness—useful, productive work. This overwhelming presence of working people is the thing that has always made me feel comfortable in China (and uncomfortable among my co-workers on most US college campuses), and though somewhat less so now than before, it's still very much in evidence in this hinterland city far from the Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou nouveau riche. I could see it in the parents bringing their children to campus with their weather worn faces and red and white and blue square vinyl “suitcases.” (However, I didn't see any of the heavy plastic bags labeled “chemical fertilizer” that rural émigrés use to carry their belongings in when they come to the cities looking for work.) Yes, I had some concerns before coming here, but without doubt I'm still quite comfortable in this China.
Regretfully, I came home tonight with only two 航空. As they say in Chinese, I have “paid my tuition” 交学费. I am a wiser man. Two 航空 is not enough on a Friday night if one has fully recovered from jet lag. I will content myself with eating garlic peanuts. There are so many wonderful ways to eat peanuts here and it reminds me of an essay from the 50s that I once read extolling peanuts at a time when their protein meant so much to the people's survival after 150 years imperialism, war, and starvation.

Back to my students. Students go to an average of 17 or 18 90-minute classes per week. Thus, they are in class a good bit more than their US counterparts though they get less homework. For this reason, too, there are classes on Saturday and lots of evening classes, and indeed I have to do most of my teaching from 4:30-6:30 p.m. or 7:30-9:30 p.m., but the late hour does not seem to dampen the enthusiasm. (Most people take an afternoon nap after lunch.) Class size is just under 30 for these writing classes. The classrooms have raised platforms and very large, high permanent wooden podiums in the front of the room, suggesting that wisdom and knowledge flow from on high to below. There are no overhead projectors, no DVD, CD or VHS players, or money for photocopying. If I want to make handouts, I will have to pay for them myself and make them off campus or make a few copies and get them around to a few students who will then pass them around for the students to copy at their own expense. (I might mention that this is may not be so different from the US where increasingly students get supplementary reading on the web and download and print it at their expense.) Students still sit on wooden stools at wooden benches on concrete floors surrounded by whitewashed concrete walls. Dust is everywhere. Keep in mind the optimism and energy I referred to above. It seems to be not in the least diminished by these conditions.

I mentioned that many of these students are from rural villages or small towns. I found it interesting that a good number of them have 2 or even 3 siblings. Relatively few of them in fact come from 3-person one-child families probably due to their rural origins (though those female students who do seemed to announce it with some pride). This is interesting in that most of them were born in the late 80s, a good bit after the enactment of the one-child policy in the early 80s. Also interesting to note is that there was usually one youngest male sibling in the larger families. That is, some of these families kept trying until they got a boy. It could be that the regulations were never strongly enforced or that these parents just bribed their way to larger families. On the other hand, there are a good number of families with one or two girls who stopped there—it's totally legal within the “one-child” policy to try again if the first child is a girl—so here too gross generalizations do not explain much, convenient as they are in the western media. Nevertheless it's true that there about 18 million fewer females than males in the youngest population cohort due to higher abortion rates for females in the last 15 or 20 years, a situation that the government is now trying to reverse with new laws about the use of ultrasound. I have read that South Asia is also experiencing this problem.

While writing about changes from high school to university, students talked about how hard they had to work to prepare for the college entrance exams and how much better life is now. Nevertheless, this rote learning in preparation for entrance examinations does not seem to have turned them to passive learners, at least not in my classes. Some of them are in fact disappointed that they didn't get into one of the “key” universities and are going to this provincial school instead. As in most countries in Asia, acceptance into one of these key schools is the ticket to a good career. Others are clearly pleased to have been able to get one of the few university seats that are available in China in spite of the fact that this school has nearly doubled its capacity in less than the past decade (from 10,000 to about 20,000 students). A few of them are a bit older, 21 or 22, suggesting that they retook the entrance exams a couple of times before succeeding. Most students mention access to the internet as one of the big new interesting and liberating experiences of being here, even though certain sites are clearly being blocked (though it's sometimes hard to distinguish between blocking and when the system is just crashing because sometimes you can get things and sometimes not. So far I can't see a clear pattern of what's blocked and what's not).

For the most part, students dress very simply and casually probably because they don't have lots of resources for such things though some clearly do. In fact, there was just an article in yesterday's local paper that some fundraising efforts gave grants totaling 400,000 RBM (about $60,000 US) to 168 local “poor” students to help them through college. Tuition here is about 5,000 RBM (about $700) per year, which is indeed a fair amount for most rural and worker families.

The first journal topic I gave students was to respond to Erich Fromm's idea of Being and Having. It was possibly ambitious, but in the class discussion they seemed to be able to get into it. The textbook that I have been given has sample essays that are pretty superficial if not outright childish and steer away from serious issues. I'm hoping to get into more challenging topics and ideas to consider. I am sure they are up to it.


Below I'm attaching an article from the UK Guardian on Beijing pollution. It pretty much agrees with what I said last time about improvements in pollution control but barely enough to keep up with runaway export-oriented economy.

'I hope the world's athletes will not be overly worried about air quality.'
Yu Xiaoxuan, environment director of the Beijing organising committee Interview by Jonathan WattsThursday August 9, 2007The Guardian
He looks like a man under stress: as one of the most senior officials in charge of air quality, Yu Xiaoxuan knows that Beijing's environmental problems are the biggest publicly stated concern of the International Olympic Committee.
In the days before our interview, the pollution index hit its worst point this summer. At noon, the skies were dark with exhaust fumes, dust from building sites and factory emissions. The 200mg of particulate matter in every cubic metre of air was four times worse than the level considered safe in Europe and twice as bad as Beijing's own standard. The higher the level, the greater the risk of lung disease and the worse the impact on athletic performances.
It is hard not to feel sorry for Yu. Beijing's pollution problems have built up over two decades and all 14 million residents are responsible. But he is the one carrying the can. Yet, official numbers suggest an improvement on the recent past. "Since 2002, when Beijing gained the right to host the Olympics, the air quality has improved every year," says Yu. "But we are a developing country. In the short term we cannot reach the standards of London, Paris or New York."
He points out that the city is in the process of switching its 1,100 coal-burning power plants to gas, reducing emissions of sulphur and nitrogen dioxide from the five main electricity generators and cutting production at the biggest iron company by 4m tonnes. More than 2,000 old buses and 5,000 taxis are being upgraded or replaced with cleaner models. The subway line network has almost been doubled to 200km.
But although environment spending has increased from 5.7bn yuan (£370m) in 1998 to 23bn yuan (£1.5bn) last year, clean-up efforts have struggled to keep up with the mess made by a supercharged economy. Beijing's GDP has doubled since 2006, energy output has ramped up 30% and 2 million more people have been added to the population. "I feel big pressure," Yu says. "Foreign athletes and visitors from developed countries will feel a big gap in the environment between here and their countries. Our own government is not satisfied, nor are experts."
Many building sites and polluting factories will be closed for the duration of the event and meteorologists are planning a barrage of rockets to induce rain to clean the roads, and the air.
Yu acknowledges, however, that all this could come to naught if there is no wind in the run-up to the games - pollution quickly builds up and chokes the city if it is not blown away every few days. He is optimistic that levels of particulate matter can be kept below the city's standard of 100mg a cubic metre. "I think God will help us. In August and July there is usually plenty of wind and rain in Beijing. With this and all our hard work in the coming year, plus the temporary measures during the games, we can keep the figure under 100 for the Olympics."
Even if it goes higher, he says, visitors should not be worried. "According to our statistics, if the figure is between 100 and 150 it only affects the health of the most sensitive group. I can't deny that there is a link between environment quality and sports performance. But if the figure is not that bad it won't have a big impact. People should remember that at the last Olympics, China came second in the medal table even though most of our athletes trained in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities with similar conditions. I hope the world's athletes will not be overly worried about air quality."
Despite the pressure, he says he is glad the Olympics is putting more of a focus on the environment. "I had no idea what my job would entail when I was assigned to environmental protection in 1974. But in the years since, I have become very passionate about it."