Wheat-dogg's World

JISHOU, HUNAN — Yesterday was unusually busy for me, so I want this chance to take to chronicle it.

Every Sunday, I teach spoken English (and some reading) to five 9-year-olds for two hours. These kids are the children of police officers — friends of my friend Smile, whose husband is an officer, too. One of my student friends helps me in this project, since I need someone to translate English to Chinese. Though the kids are rambunctious, they are also very bright, so the job is not as awful as it sounds (unless the reader happens to be a primary school teacher, who would know what I mean).

At 11, Nora and I left the police residential compound (警公安局 jing gong an ju) and headed for lunch at the university dining hall. There we were joined by four of my students (roommates), our friend from the PE college and a senior in the chemistry college who wanted just to talk with me. Afterward, three of us went for a walk and a sit in the sunshine, which has been in short supply these last four weeks, and the rest went off to their own things.

Our conversation in the sunlight revolved around that bane of Chinese students’ existence — national exams. Kasurly, one of my sophomore oral English students, had just taken the CET6 (College English Test – band 6) the day before. What, a junior from the PE college (no, he is not on second!), had taken the CET3 that morning. Both figured they passed, but were not entirely sure. Kasurly was considering her next steps — a national secretarial exam and/or a national translator’s exam — while What was debating taking the postgraduate exam next year. I have almost given up trying to keep track of China’s national exam system; it makes ETS look like a bunch of amateurs.

Anyway, at 1 pm, I had to go to a meeting of the JiDa Tae Kwon Do Association. One of my freshmen (also named Smile) had invited me after I told her I had earned a yellow belt 20-some years ago. This club was started by two upperclassmen in the PE college, both black belts. For 30 RMB a term, a student can join and learn this Korean martial art, a real bargain. After some warm ups (stretches and a run around the track — they did two laps and I wimped out after one — 400 m), they gathered around me and asked questions like students do at English corner.

Smile asked her classmates to tell me why they wanted to learn tae kwon do. Some said for fun, others for fitness, but Smile said she wanted to learn it for defense. She was quite frank in explaining her motivation. As she did it in English, most of the students there probably didn’t catch most of it, so she didn’t risk losing too much face. Here is what she said, as best I can recall.

Smile is a country girl and her family is pretty poor. When she was 16, she had come home dejected from a poor showing in the college entrance examination. She went to her room and sulked for a while, then came out to watch TV. Suddenly, a man barged into their home, grabbed her father and tried to take money from him. Her mom failed in defending her husband, and 16-year-old Smile ran to their aid. But her kicks had little effect, and the man ran out of their home with her dad’s money.

The girl was sad that her kicks had no power, and ashamed that she could not defend her parents. So, at university, when she heard she could learn tae kwon do for very little money, Smile jumped at the chance.

How she managed to relate all this without bursting into tears still amazes me, but I could tell she was making a supreme effort to contain herself.

Then, the white belts played an elaborate game of round-robin tag (and yes, I joined in it), while the colored belts practiced punches and kicks. They gave me a huge, red Christmas star as a gift, and we posed for the usual array of commemorative photo shoots. I then left to make my 3 pm appointment.

Nik is the 8-year-old son of Grisha and Anya, two visiting piano teachers from Ukraine. I teach Nik English two hours a week, while his folks handle the rest of his curriculum (Ukrainian, Russian, mathematics, health, natural science and civics) so he can rejoin his hometown school once they return in the spring. We figure Nik will be far ahead of his classmates there, since Grisha tells me the local schools have been closed twice because of the flu.

After our lesson, I got on QQ where I found Tina, one of my former students. She was minding one of her mom’s clothing shops and was starving, so she asked me to join her for dinner downtown. Since I did not feel like cooking, I agreed and took a taxi to meet her for baozai (clay pot rice dish). We then did some window shopping, then returned to her shop, where I tried on a couple of nice looking wool coats. (Price: about 600 RMB, or $88, after Tina’s generous discount.) I decided to wait on buying one, because my friend Frieda texted me to say she was at a concert on campus, nursing a godawful headache but gamely attending to support her roommate’s performance. I decided the gentlemanly thing to do was to join her, to support her supporting. Besides, I like attending these end-of-year concerts. While the performers are generally amateurs, and sometimes not so good, there is at least variety to keep from being bored.

Except when the dramatic skits go on too long, and the public address system is much too loud. Naturally, faculty get to sit right in the front row, next to the loudspeakers. Frieda’s headache was suffering from the noise, but she had promised her buddy she would stay to watch her. As things go, her roommate’s song was the next to last act, so the two of us gamely waited it out, munching on the peanuts, sunflower seeds and oranges left for us faculty types.

Performances over, the troupe (all members of the applied physics college) posed for pix, and of course, they invited me — the only westerner there — to join them. Jeez louise.

Before we both called it a night, Frieda and I had a late night snack — noodles for her and fried rice for me — then we went home to get some sleep. (She was tired, too. She had taught piano lessons all day and not taken time for lunch or dinner.)

So, that was my Sunday — 14 hours of fun. Not a typical day, but illustrative of my life here.