JISHOU, HUNAN — I closed the old year in good spirits, but started the new year irritated at needing to suddenly change my plans for Jan. 1, 2009. By the end of the first day of the New Year, however, the irritation was gone. I was exhausted, but ebullient and quite content.

New Year’s Eve I spent with some of my former Oral English students. Kasurly (that’s her English name) met me to go shopping at the supermarket that afternoon. We have become cooking buddies, so we made dinner for ourselves while we awaited her seven roommates to come watch a big concert on my TV.

Around 9 or so, my Ukrainian neighbors invited me up for another dinner they were making with one of my present students, Jen. So I left the gaggle of freshmen to watch their TV program, and hung out with the girls upstairs. Denis, the husband of a Ukrainian voice teacher, came up later, and we all shared his brandy. Then the concert girls came up to toast the New Year before they had to scurry back to their dorm after curfew.

Originally, my plans for New Year’s Day were to spend the afternoon making dumplings at the home of Fu Xiao, one of my students, but on Dec. 30, I had received a call from my liaison officer, David Luo, that forced me to postpone that date.

January 3rd, 2009 | Tags: China, Fenguang, Hunan ETV, New Years Day, Yoyo | Category: China, Media | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — With the end of the term approaching, I have been so busy lately that writing anything substantive for this blog was well nigh impossible. I’ll try to recap recent events as best I can, starting with Christmas Eve.

All the colleges here at Jishou University hold some kind of end-of-term/welcome-the-new-year party, reminiscent of those old movies where they say, “Hey, let’s put on a show!” Members of the colleges sing, dance, act in skits, or play instruments, and the audience plays some silly games. (I joined in on one game a week ago. Blindfolded, with a partner riding piggyback and giving directions, I had to stomp on balloons to burst them. We won a 2-liter of Coke.)

The College of International Exchange is the only one that puts on a Christmas-themed performance, scheduled suitably for Dec. 24. Our students spent weeks rehearsing their acts, while we faculty managed to cram our practice time into a few afternoons. Being a white-haired, bearded fellow, I was asked to play Father Christmas, and students also pressured me to sing a song. So I was really busy that night.

I discovered that our students are multi-talented, with considerable performing chops. We gave the College of Music and Dance a run for its money, with our dancers, singers, instrumentalists and amateur actors. We faculty managed to pull off dancing a waltz to the tune of “Edelweiss,” to the cheers of the audience, and I managed not to freeze on stage to sing “I Wonder as I Wander” and “The Christmas Song” — a cappella — passably well.

December 29th, 2008 | Tags: China, Christmas, firewater, food, party | Category: China | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Hard to believe that the semester is nearly over, but it’s true. Time passes too quickly.

It also means that I have been in Jishou for three entire months. While it may be hard to believe, it’s become home for me. I still struggle with being absolutely illiterate in Chinese and being incapable of having even a simple conversation in Chinese, but I learn new bits of Chinese each day. So, I figure I’m making progress.

Chief on everyone’s mind now are finals, and for the seniors, postgraduate exams. Anxiety levels are high, and we all are busier than usual. Of course, the students are more anxious than the faculty.

This weekend, I need to write six exams to turn into the office. Each writing or reading class has to sit for a two-hour exam. Oral class students need to be tested individually, and I have 35 sophomores, so I’ll be occupied with them for the next several days.

Fortunately, I have had some experience writing exams, and I have been giving the students in-class assignments for a few weeks now to gauge how long they will need to complete the tasks. They naturally want the tests to be easy. We’ll see. We’ll see …

The seniors are the ones most stressed. China has national exams in several subjects for students to qualify for a bachelor’s degree, and thus postgraduate (graduate school, in US-talk) studies. They all have to pass the national English test. Those planning postgrad work overseas also have to score acceptably well on the IELTS or TOEFL English tests.

December 4th, 2008 | Tags: China, english, ESL, semester, students, teaching | Category: China, Teaching English | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Thanksgiving Day has already ended over here. ‘Round about this time, you folks in the US of A will be preparing the turkey, or driving someplace where someone else is preparing the turkey. Eat well, and drive carefully, please.

Today was the first time I have celebrated Thanksgiving without my family since I was 22 and living in Wyoming. Then, as now, I had friends who were substitute family, so I was not forlorn. In fact, I had a pretty good day today.

I can’t say whether it’s common in China, but the College of International Exchange seems to have adopted Thanksgiving in a uniquely Chinese way. Outside our fourth-floor wing of classrooms was a large poster made up of sticky-notes in the shape of a heart. Each note carried a message from a student to his or her parents, thanking them for sending them to university, or to their friends, giving their best wishes for the day.

Several students also sent me emails and text messages wishing me a “Happy Thanks Giving.” After morning classes, one group of freshmen treated me and David, the other foreign teacher (who’s from the UK, but it’s cool), to lunch off campus. Afterward, one group went with David to the bank, and the rest accompanied me to my apartment.

November 27th, 2008 | Tags: China, family, friends, thanksgiving | Category: China, General stuff | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — TV people are the same all over. They are just plain weird.

At Sunday’s Engish Corner, James, one of the older participants, told me that the provincial TV network, Hunan TV, was planning a Christmas program. They wanted to invite me to talk about US Christmas customs. James said he was also going to ask Michael, an American who teaches at No. 1 Middle School, to participate as well.

Toward the end of the evening’s meeting, James approached me again and said that the TV people wanted to meet us right away. So, we grabbed a taxi to a tea room at a local hotel near the railway station. With us was Shelldy, a junior music major who runs English Corner and hosts the daily campus radio broadcasts in English. She was to be my interpreter.

Awkward moment #1: I was the only person there with no command of Chinese. Meanwhile, the TV people had no command of English. So, Shelldy, my translator, was kept very busy. The TV people (James’ sister, two camera guys and the hostess of a weekend features program) were planning to take us to Dehang to talk about Christmas. Michael, who has been here a year already, was reluctant to join in, so we roped Juliann and Stephanie in from the Teacher’s College to join us.

November 13th, 2008 | Tags: China, christmas special, hunan tv, weirdness | Category: China, Commentary | Comments (3)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Following our odyssey to the Miao village, we returned to our hotel in Fenghuang to rest up for the bonfire party.

Now, I had the impression it would be a participatory event: a group of people gathered around a big bonfire having a party. Seems reasonable, right?

Way wrong. The Bonfire Party is a performance in an amphitheatre near to the Golden Phoenix International Hotel, featuring local dancers, drummers and musicians. Included in the festivities were an auction of three pieces of art, the local tourist gimmick of “put on the Miao girl’s costume” on stage, and a long conga line at the end.

Don’t get the idea I disliked the experience. On the contrary, the dancing and music were wonderful, although it would have helped if I had had the libretto, and costumes dazzling. The photos I took unfortunately do the colors no justice. The girls did a good job explaining to me what was happening on stage — depictions of various aspects of Miao history and customs — but the details eluded me.

Kentuckians are probably familiar with “The Stephen Foster Story,” that perennial outdoor dramatization of the musician’s life and work in Bardstown. It uses Foster’s music to highlight Foster’s life, taking license with the chronology to make a good story. The movie “Mamma Mia” uses ABBA’s music to similiar effect, although of course that story is entirely fictional.

November 11th, 2008 | Tags: bonfire party, China, FengHuang, hunan, shopping, tourism | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s like I fell into a space-time warp and ended up in polite company in the US of the 1950s or ’60s. In the last two days, I have had two Chinese ask me if I thought Barack Obama was capable of being a good president, because, you know, he’s black.

Since the first question came from a middle-school teacher, I chalked it up to a generational prejudice. When the second question came from one of my students, I realized I had just encountered my first exposure to Chinese racism.

While most Chinese seem really pleased that Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States, there is an undercurrent of doubt that he can “do it,” since, you know, he’s black. It’s the kind of attitude I would have expected from adults when I was younger, but hearing it in 2008 from younger people is pretty disturbing.

It’s not entirely unexpected, however. I knew before I arrived that dark-skinned English-language teachers have a tougher time finding work in China than us lily-white teachers. There are three prejudices working side by side here.

First, Han Chinese, who constitute the vast majority of the population, are predisposed to look on any of their own minorities as being “inferior” to the Han, much as whites have looked down on practically every other ethnic group they have encountered. I suppose it’s a typical attitude of the “ruling class” to consider itself above everyone else.

November 11th, 2008 | Tags: African-Americans, Africans, Barack Obama, blacks, China, dark skin, racism | Category: China, Commentary, Teaching English | Comments (1)

JISHOU, HUNAN — It took nearly a month of waiting, but I finally visited the historic city of FengHuang, which is only an hour’s bus ride from here.

Lack of travel papers, other commitments and bad weather prevented me from making the trip before, so when it seemed likely we would have decent weather, I made sure people knew I wanted to visit FengHuang, a town with a 1300-year history.

Since my senior guides were otherwise occupied with such trivialities as trying to graduate, they convinced a cadre of my sophomores — ten in all — to escort me. Since some are local girls, one had a boyfriend whose buddy ran a tour service of sorts, and another’s uncle and aunt owned a comfy guest house right on the Tuojiang River in FengHuang. Some had been to FengHuang before, but others, like me, were first-timers. So, all in all, we had a lot of fun.

A “FengHuang” is a Chinese phoenix, comprising both male (feng) and female (huang) aspects. The town of FengHuang developed from an earlier settlement that may have been a military encampment, to keep the troublesome Miao people at bay. The town moved to its present location on the Tuojiang River during the Ming Dynasty 700 years ago. At first, its population consisted primarily of Han soldiers, but eventually Miao moved out of their cave dwellings in the mountains to build characteristic wooden homes in FengHuang. That style of archtecture, with tiled roofs and upturned ornamentation on the roof corners, is still prevalent in the old town.

November 10th, 2008 | Tags: bandits, China, FengHuang, Miao | Category: China | Comments (1)

JISHOU, HUNAN — I’m too tired right now to provide a detailed summary of my weekend trip to FengHuang, so I’m dropping two photos here as teasers.

My guides on this trip were these ten fine young women from my sophomore Oral English class. We were in a cave leading to the Miao Village, a tourist destination, where I met a 105-year-old woman who in turn met her first American.

Our base for the weekend was the historic town of FengHuang (now a small city catering to tourists). As it happened, there was a Miao couple getting married today, and these ladies were singing in advance of the ceremony.

The Miao are another ethnic minority in China, and are also a mountain people like the Tujia. Way back when, Miao were bandits and generally a real pain in the ass for China’s emperors. In response to the Miao problem, the Han Chinese built the Southern Great Wall 500 years ago. Unlike its northern brother, the Southern Wall gets little press, but parts of it still stand in western Hunan.

Miao women traditionally wear blue pants and tunics with embroidery on the cuffs. Older women also wear tall, black turban-like hats. For special occasions, they bring out their elaborate silver jewelry, as you can see here.

November 9th, 2008 | Tags: China, FengHuang, hunan, Miao, Southern Great Wall | Category: China | Leave a comment