Proud Scars September 26, 2009

Isabel Allende wrote, “Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars”. Am I falling out of love with China? I find my tolerance level stretched to near-breaking limits, my patience thinning, and my balance toppling almost hourly. What lessons are in Lin’An for me, and did I mistake a need for challenge for foolhardiness?

Take last week: I sent my biggest, noisiest class happily home with a mental note to have assistant Nancy teach the most boisterous one to count in English while I stretched the others with “I want three blue Legos…” next meeting. Boss Shirley invited me to sit down, “explained” with Nancy’s interpretation my “problem with my visa because of age” for an hour. “What can I do?” I asked. “Nothing.”

Then Shirley gave me a cake box, too late to cut and share with staff, too big to fit in my bike basket. “Bear will take you home; it will go bad if you leave at school.” Mark and I did our best with late-night coffee, laughing about my “Happy Birthday” gift. He enjoyed it again for breakfast.  Eternal optomist, I headed out next morning. Our utilitarian concrete box-complexes aren’t picture-worthy, but bear hopeful banners like “Charmlinan” and sit atop mostly-empty shops.

Within 1 km, I found breakfast next to a communal garden–hot, sweetened soy milk and braids of fried bread or rounds filled with carrot (mild turnip), egg, and grated vegetables; I eyed the less popular, huge wok of noodles. I cycled past the mountainous repository for plastics, gleaned from smaller dumps like the one out my kitchen window, toward another development.

The roads over the river weren’t finished, but one skirted women washing clothes. A man and baby son pulled up a long fishing line, closed their still-empty styro cooler, and climbed aboard their scooter “Mei you!” he said to me. No fish for lunch today. Excited about the promise of a Hangzhou weekend–acquaintances who used to work at Babe School to show Mark and me around, hostel and West Lake jazz club reservations, the prospect of seeing KC friends who teach in Hangzhou, and a day in pagodas, Starbuck’s, and Silk Street–I packed my bag. E-mail arrived an hour before leaving: “Don’t forget your passport.” I made five phone calls to find out that Zoe had given our passports and receipt for them to the university official whom, we had understood earlier, could not help with our visas.

I swallowed my disappointment, and we walked to a neighborhood restaurant for fresh fish and vegetables. Mark was delighted that they gave us our own pot of tea and indicated we should take our time. (hut home picture here) I told him of the “homes” I had biked past, where the rag-pickers who daily go through our neighborhood dump may live. He said they might be construction workers, also poorly paid in China’s social pecking order. Back home in our comfy apartments, we started a Scrabble game; Mark hadn’t played since France, but it came back to him. “That sounds like a Bear voice,” and it was.

Zoe and Bear brought expensive pastries–filled with mushrooms, pickled vegetables, nothing sweet– from a new bakery and settled on my couch with more of their story, sprinkled liberally with. “Bob F__!” The Brit couple who used to work at Babe evidently linked up with Zoe and Bear’s old partners and a pregnant teaching assistant (“impossible to fire”) and started a rival school, using Babe School’s phone list to offer discounts. Bob “told the university that Mark had cancer and should not get a visa.” Mark told Zoe he had, indeed, had cancer near his eye that was “no longer a problem,.” He had told Bob over a meal soon after he came here. Zoe and Bear were astounded.

I sat and pondered the tense problem of “has” and “had” lost in interpretation. We ate unwanted pastries and reminded them that Mark had just passed his extensive physical in China. Conversation moved to new knowledge for me: Zoe’s offer to immigrate to Australia within five years (they will); my teaching “the majority of Babe’s 70 students; paying the old partner 150,000 yuan one year after he invested 100,000 “because he was a friend” who wanted out; the university official on whose decision hangs our visa approval being new partner, “Shirley’s friend;” Bear’s only making 2200 yuan/month as a university draftsman instructor; the university wanting us both to teach there (vetoed earlier, now with seeming approval by Zoe), and Mark’s needing to go to HongKong to renew his visa sometime. “Mama, you can go with him.” (As “foreign language expert in China’s past, it seems I don’t need to leave China to renew.) Does that mean a subsidized trip to Hong Kong?

Bear got up, wandered the apartment, “Shui?” They inspected my fountain flowing from a crystal ball rolling past changing light. Bear waxed ecstatic about my watercolors, scenes from the campus lake. High praise from one who teaches graphic arts, I figured. On our feet, I was glad they headed out the door, not noticing a granddaddy cockroach who met his demise in the hall.

Mark and I shook our heads, wondered if we’ll have passports by October 1-8 trip to Yellow Mountain, and said good night. Before sleep, I mentally ticked off a few positives: Zoe brought me her freebie iron (she sends her clothing out for cleaning) yesterday, the 3s and 4s class was sweet and fun (in spite of no assistant, one child throwing up, another crying three times when Mom repeatedly popped her head in, and another needed to pee in the middle of a colors lesson), I found myself laughing with all three kindergarten groups, Zoe’s request to “teach another grade 2 class on Saturday; the parents insist on you!” didn’t materialize, I received a gift of massage and facial “because the owner is Bear’s friend,” and to-my-knowledge health among friends and family on both sides of the globe, Kent’s successful pinot noir crush just finished, Janet’s saying her teaching was going well. I snuggled down under my duvet, glad to hear cooling rain fall.

Over next mornings’ left-over pastry and the last of my Hainan coffee for breakfast, Mark vehemently restated he’ll have nothing further to do with Bob. I reminded him we’d only heard Zoe and Bear’s side of the fragmented story. Unready to give up my only source of Lin’An English reading, I called Bob to swap their last three loaners for three more. No love lost or found–just a love of reading! I’m determined to stay above that fray. Midmorning e-mails came from the US. Lives that seemed bland a few months back momentarily connect me with longing for my Montana deck and its view of evergreens on Pat’s Knob.

From Laos came a half-joking note about friends’ cultural clashes, “Perhaps we need to get together for a group hug!” I wandered across to the Zhejiang U campus for a lakeside glass of hot lemon tea and a past pocket of sanity. Perhaps, weighing the tumultous tugs and positive pulls, I’ll have soon discovered elusive joy seeping back into life here.

Minds Almost Meeting–September 12, 2009

Was it only a week ago that I climbed to the Lin An’s Ming Dynasty pagoda, tribute to King Qian Wu Yue? No savory moments at Babe Training School, just stress, disorganization and surprises. I’m wrestling with feeling more like the relic the pagoda was declared in 1962.
 
Saturday, I brought first graders (one reportedly age 9) downstairs chanting, “Red, yellow, blue” and dragging tiredly to Mamas after two hours of English guessing games. They’ll adjust to recognizing “Put your name in the cup” (to win the day’s big prize, a pencil), sit here, make a circle, say ___, color ___, write___” and get the dazed look off faces that smile delightedly when I help them through their turn. We’re all tired. The new texts were clearly too advanced, so we just matched colors to do the first page. We played games, using themselves to add and subtract. They loved musical chairs for “Take away one…”

The one new (demo) kid seemed ready to sign up. Zoe announced, “Virginia has a high sign-up percentage” (really?) and turned to me, “You look tired. You sleep OK?”
“No, I e-mailed you. I’m frustrated.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This (in front of at least 20 kids and parents) isn’t a good place. I’ll talk later.”
“Oh, OK.”
Later, eyes feeling feverish, I told her two hours was too long for that age to “study English,” even with the break we took between hours. “But we must! The parents have no other time and want their children to study with you.” Mark, sitting quietly at his computer, supportedly suggested we turn off the lights and take a 20-minute rest break; Zoe was silent. I plunged on: the new text seems must be at least second grade, but I got it only in time to look at a few pages.
“We drove to Hangzhou because the texts didn’t arrive and got them!”
“The red book was appropriate for T-Th Grade 1, not this one.”
“We need to change texts!” She gathered up her notes.
I plunged on— “Zoe, an hour T-Th is too long for the 3s-4s. Parents agreed that 40 minutes was best. Is that OK?”
Silence again. Later, “I must ask Michael (co-owner).”
Heat rising, I flared, “I cannot continue with learning things at the last minute or having them changed from what I
understood. No texts ready although the assistant assured me they were, teaching today when Mark and I both missed it on the new schedule, demo classes that no one told me were not regular students, supplies disappearing when I need them for teaching.”
She said, “Frankly speaking, I’m a mess right now.” She told me her mother-in-law is in the hospital, so she’s the daily care-giver while they await suspected womb cancer reports, Bear’s “not good with Asido” (<2 years) so she must care for him, the baby-sitter’s gone now, she took the foreign English test last weekend, and they got half the expected enrollment “because of one teacher saying….” Sympathy and shades of my own child-raising days and caring for a dying relative tugged at my heart. My backbone got a steely feeling. “No need to say whose fault.”
From Zoe, “I know those sound like excuses. I need to be at Babe School full time. I tell the girls, but they don’t do what I say. I have to do it myself.”

I expressed sympathy about her mother-in-law, then told her she was the boss and part of that job was to see that things were done. She kept repeating, “I told them to…” (I could’ve cite many things she told me one day, forgot about the next, but I didn’t.)

“Mama, I learn much from you.” (I hear this almost daily.)
Bear came in; they switched to rapid-fire Chinese. I was suddenly told, “40 minutes is OK” (one battle won) and “We take Mama to eat!” (last thing I felt like doing) They insisted: “Beef!” Mark and I ate hot pot at a new, expensive place, their solution to my problems.
On the bike-way home in the dark, the best Saturday event happened: a glasses shop re-affixed the earpiece to my broken glasses for free. I fell into bed, hoping I wasn’t going down the slope to a case of the flu.
At least, I’ve two days to recoup my energy and experience to bring to Tuesday’s classes. I awakened with kindly feelings and renewed resolve to help Zoe, if possible, to “administrate” better (learn to delegate effectively?). She must be in a panic; if the school is to survive, she feels it and her whole world depend on her.
I turn my energies to family members and friends carrying Zoe-like burdens and uncertainty across the ocean. I see you each in loving light doing your best, letting go of what you can’t control, enjoying what you can. I’m doing the same on this side of the world…

 
September 14: Time sooths: an evening of hot lemon tea under willows by the campus lake, a non-teaching day to organize my three classrooms, coffee and breakfast after a bike ride that introduced Mark to a Magnum bar, and an e-mail from Zoe thanking me for talking with her and inviting me to tomorrow’s meeting, plus her and Zoe asking Mark and me to go to Yellow Mountain over upcoming National Day, October 1-8. I’d love to see a fresh sunrise from the top!

Expert Immigrant Labor –September 11, 2009

I’m not wanting to be awake at dawn thinking of if and what to do about work! I click on npr and hear the president’s address remembering those lost on 9/11. Had I really forgotten? I’m again sitting on last evening’s 10″ stool in front of seven five-year-olds, pointing and singing, “Today is Friday…All day long…” oblivious to emotional ties to the 11 on the calendar.

We roll a big red ball, saying the English name of the recipient, singing repeatedly. “Roll it to a friend…___!” They catch on. We move on to plans for red/yellow/blue legos. I open the closet for the 250-yuan tub of legos. They’re gone! Frantically, I search the other three closets–nothing. Oh great! The first week, I’ve allowed my most expensive new toys to disappear. My Chinese assistant is speechless and the natives are restless, so I go to Plan B–coloring a rainbow. They’re fascinated as I mix yellow and blue for green. We build rainbows, naming colors. They leave smiling. “Hey! I’m a good teacher,” I tell myself.

I go before dinner, full of dread, to boss, Zoe. “The legos are missing. Do you know…?” She laughs. “Oh, I took them for my Asido to play with.” Bear, her husband, laughs. I mime the heart attack they almost gave me, make a mental note to ask her to leave a note when she borrows something. Zoe had been my assistant for the first kindergarten class September 10, pronounced the color lesson with legos “most professional,” then made my next one near-disaster. She asked, “Do you think Abdul’s demo lesson more suitable than Mark’s for grade 3? Mark’s students say it is boring and difficult to understand.” I tell her, “I’ve never seen Mark teach. He’s experienced. I know he can adjust his style. Did you talk to him about it?” “No.” “It seems fair to talk with Mark before you make a decision or talk with other teachers.”

 ”Oh, Mama Virginia, you must go to your 6:20 class!” “I thought you said it was 7:30…?” “No, it is now posted 6:20.” “You promised to show me before the schedule was set, but I’m glad of this change.” I run upstairs to two expected pre-schoolers, marching in with mothers. The Chinese assistant is nowhere to be seen. I wave forcefully “Bye-bye!” and moms scurry out the door, anxious mice. The boys are mirror opposites–one almost catatonic, the other chattering Chinese.

We start scribbling with red. I’m using a mirror, my marker, moving their hands, touching their mouths, and the noisy one says, “Red.” A star on his hand, and the other one whispers “red…” The door opens. Assistant Heather, “Virginia, those are not your students. They are for a demo class. Here is your one student.” I recognize a sweetheart I’ve seen before. “Tell them in Chinese to please sit here and watch.” Moms come back to hover and coach, along with the adult with my paid student. We shift to legos, and I cajole the children into repeating “red.”

Assistant repeats everything I say in Chinese. I ask her to stop. She then repeats my English words. I ask her to remain quiet, just “Help me with your actions.” How will they learn to listen to me with Chinese direction at every turn? I busy her with recording names, newly-given English names, telephone numbers. They match yellow/blue to earn lego pieces. We build houses, trains, robots. Active Lon cries and wanders, taciturn Matt begins to speak, and Sara whispers and generally follows my mimed actions.

I tell the assistant to bring Lon back when he explores my desk, supplies, CD player, shelves. She does it once. Big red ball comes out, and I invite grown-ups to play too, so we repeat all names several times. After 30 minutes, we’re all tired, only halfway through. Toilet break (no “bathroom” or baths here) and “Wash your hands” chant. I make a mental note to have snacks next session. We try to sit in a circle on the floor. “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” was never sung slower. Assistant bellows off-melody, “Eyes, ears, mouth, and nose” until I ask her to sing softly. Then they echo one-word–at-a-time.

They watch me draw myself–hair, eyes, mouth, a few details. They look in a mirror at themselves, fill ink/blue/yellow/green eyes in the circle I draw on each paper. We identify hair in the mirror, and they each reach for black. Success! We admire our faces again, choose a color for another star-on-hand, and say “Bye-bye.” Lon’s permanently welded around his mom’s neck. Matt’s mom wants an interpreted chat about “How’s his pronunciation?” I assure her he’ll say “red, blue, green” like me if I teach him, like her if she teaches him. She smiles happily, “Tsank you!” Then she has him tell me, “Tomorrow…is my…birthday!” I draw him a cake with 4 candles. They confer, and he repeats her words, “I love you!” The woman has really good English.

Sara’s Nana (grandmother? nanny?) gives her over to mother, who arrives with a lot of questions, all in Chinese. I never did get anything interpreted beyond assuring Mom that Sara could–and did–”open her mouth.” Both Sara’s family and Heather subscribe to the “Louder means better” school of learning, I guess. “Please interpret that Sara showed understanding when she did what I said. She’ll speak louder when she knows me better.” I escape to teacher’s room, where Mark sits at his computer–and three of his students play games on mine. I pull rank and shoo them out: “I need my computer.”

The owner’s daughter comes in to see if I’m off “her” computer yet. If off, I’ve no place to sit. The kids burst in like tennis balls out of a sealed can, while parents chat and argue their child’s chances of success in the lounge, oblivious to the chaos. “Let’s get out of here,” I tell Mark. I know Mark was a CA Middle School teacher, admire his laid back ways and easy smile. We’ve just come through three days when I nursed him (he lives next door) while he lay flat with back spasms, then two days of my sleeping off severe allergy reactions when he brought me yogurt and instant noodle cups.

Sipping tea by the nearby campus lake, when well enough to walk, he reminds me philosophically when my sense of justice and opinions about what constitutes good teaching practices rise to my heated surface, “We’re just immigrant workers in China, Virginia,” and I calm down. We bike home under street lights. “I’m liberated until Tuesday evening’s classes, Mark!” I’m jubilant. I hear Mark’s philosophy that planning lessons is useless, since Zoe just gave him a text at the 11th hour. We stop and watch impressive swing dancing in two parks.

My phone rings. “Mama, you know you have two hours tomorrow?” (I had just e-mailed friends my Tue-Friday pm hours. envisioning the delicious three-day-weekends when I’d visit Xuzhou, Hangzhou, Yellow Mountain, read, dine, sleep…) “What two hours?” “I put it on the schedule. And I have your texts ready.” “What age? What texts?” “The same as last time (only one class has texts, to my knowledge).”

By the time I got home, I figured it out. She’d added a first-second grade class on Saturday afternoons without splitting their two hours/week. They’re offspring of the movers and shakers of Lin’An, excellent students in the demo lessons. What’s a foreign worker to say but, “Yes, boss.” I push down fear that the most ADHD kid I’ve encountered in China has also been added to their mix. What did I do to deserve this? Left a comfortable job in paradise. Got a pay raise promise (not forthcoming until October 10) with an apartment like one I admired with balcony (didn’t happen), took on the challenge of “beginning a kindergarten program” (I’m touted as expert, but not clued in on schedule/expectations/materials/activities until last minute, if then). Left a boss who said “waiting until the last minute worked” for her and gained a boss who stomps out of shouting matches in faculty meetings and doesn’t appear for a day, tells me one thing later swears she said something else, and works hours on micro-managing inefficient details.

They clearly need help, but I’m getting too old for this kind of flying blind! Not one to look back too far, once my hand is to the plow, I’m awake at 4:30 a.m. and e-mailing Zoe. “I’m frustrated…Can we talk?” Stay tuned.

Wind Power, September 4, 2009

Mid-summer, small windmills appeared up and down Sanya’s Chunguang Lu in front of my development, FengXingLong Gardens. Biking under the stilled pin-wheels that powered streetlights, I got to wondering about China’s windo-powered history. China Daily Business section June 3 showed road lamps powered by wind in Zhejiang Province, home of my next teaching experience, so that whetted my appetite for learning more.

China now has the fourth largest wind capacity in the world, after USA, Germany, and Spain. India trails in fifth place. All recognize the advantages of renewable, low water consumption, emission-free wind power. It’s the cheapest form of renewable energy. China boasts a year-on-year 100% growth this past few years. It projects installed capacity of 30,000 megawats (mW) by 2010’s end, up 12,000 mW from this year. Six more power bases are planned by 2020. Then current 2% of of China’s total power generation capacity would increase from next year’s projected 10%.
 
There are problems in this numbers game. Their grid capacity can’t keep pace; some wind power plants can’t connect to the grid effectively. China Longyuan Electiic Power Group Corp, producer of a third of the country’s wind power, has started offshore wind projects. The country’s five major energy companies have started wind power businesses
 
One thing is certain, China will continue to need increasing electricity, whether from thermal, hydropower, or wind. Here (Lin’An, where I moved 9/1 to Hangzhou’s “suburb” town of 150,000, I plug in 5/2009 www.linanwindow.com’s Chinglish take on “Rapidly deviloping industrial economices:…867 rural enterprises, 18 big-medium-sizedenterprises, 6 provincial, 2 municipal groups, and more than 150 ventures…exporting products of the joint venture are over 100 kinds…textile, cloth, wire, electric cable, building material, wine-making industry…Water and electricity facilities have got rapid increasing…71 small waterpower stations…With 40000KW installed capacity and 270 million RMB, the Qingshan palace center is busy in building…”
 
I bicycle over river bridges and near 100,000-ton capacity Second Water Work on the 3 km ride through endless traffic to Babe English Training School. Evenings and weekends until we open for business September 10, I do demonstration lessons with parents anxiously looking on, coaching their children until I have a Chinese Training Assistant interpret my assertive demand that they remain silent. We dutifully turn on/off air conditioning before/after using my rooms.

Virginia’s Housing History, Take Four! Saturday, Aug 29th

A first in China, this Lin’An apartment 3 km from workplace, Babe English Training School. It was clean inside, with many small necessities like broom, soap, purified water, and food in refridgerator.  The “Enterance” (spelling seen on prominent supermarket out a bus window) is securely triple-locked, though I’m told theft isn’t a problem. Sliding doors to my drying room “balcony” got its broken lock fixed the second day here; they cleaned up trash on the mildew-streaked cement out there the third day. No place for drinking tea, that!

I’ve prettied up the walls with US calendar art and Chinese folk art gifts from Hainan. Yesterday morning, I biked to a supermarket for peanut butter (chunky, knock-off Skippy!) and an electric pot for morning oatmeal. Zoe and Bear arrived with a rice cooker and loaner bike; Co-owner Shirley gave me a box of tart plums, now in season. Clock arrived after I settled in, with explanation that same Chinese word for “death” doubles for “clock”, so I put Hainan Cheri’s grandma’s cross-stitch insoles there to remind myself Time Marches On!
 
I await a TV and–hopefully–chairs and a table to join a funky puppy-print red futon. Playful puppies play ball over my queen bed night and day; computer sits on a corner desk. Tiled bathroom gets cleaned each time I shower; washer is big. View from bath and kitchen gets lively around 7:00 a.m. with the trash truck’s rumble. I’m hoping to screen that view with plants and look beyond to university trees and buildings.
 
I cooked chicken-vegetable stew to share with Mark, next door co-worker. He’s delighted to be here, away from gang-infested Oakland Middle Schools. He’s sharing Skype and indebted me greatly yesterday. I boarded the bus, hoping to eat lunch near school and leisurely prepare for four demo classes with five-six year olds and parents. Exiting when I saw the landmark overhead tubes (water? electricity?), everything started to look alike with no other familiar landmarks.

No cell phone answer from Zoe, my owner life-line in Lin’An. I walked both directions, discovering the emergency yuan I carry had been removed when I washed cell phone carrier. I had ID and 1.5 yuan left, so I boarded Bus 6 back to my flat. Zoe answered a third call, and Mark biked home to lead me through twists and turns on bikes (seat’s still far too low, after raising it beyond where Chinese wanted it raised). We arrived to…no kids!

A teaching assistant ran to KFC for a sandwich, and Chinese teacher Sam gave me “bubble tea” (the same sweet milk tea with rice balls Hainan called “pearl tea”–no bean curd, like I thought), and I relaxed a moment.
 
Teaching times had changed; I taught 5-6 year olds (including one, whose grandpa told me my class was “too easy”; then I learned his grandson was nearly-eight years old!); next came a mixture with one girl whose mom needed to sit behind her to wipe tears and sisters who cried until Mom took them out (the older one told Zoe she “was the best in her kindergarten and didn’t understand everything with this foreigner”); last, 3-4 year olds straggled in over thirty minutes’ time and were so delightful you could eat them with a spoon. Zoe said parents were signing kids up; it sounded like she was doing an agressive sell job with them.
 
I fall asleep before reading much at night; I can get Fish Fry on www.kcuf.org mornings, and perhaps we’ll soon have some kind of schedule by September 10, when classes start. One day at a time while it marches on…