Logically speaking, it doesn’t make too much sense. Jishou is a small city, with few (Western-style) amenities. It takes at least two hours to get to the nearest airport. And Jishou University is an also-ran in the rankings of China’s institutions of higher learning.

My friends in bigger cities in China have encouraged me to look elsewhere for teaching jobs in China. One said, “The pay will be better, and the students will be more excellent.”

Yes, and no.

No question about the pay. If I moved to Beijing, or even Changsha, I could probably double my pay pretty easily. Of course, my expenses would also increase, and I’d have the hassles of dealing with big-city life. (Changsha has 5 million people. Beijing has 22 million, making NYC look like a small town.) Big cities have higher costs of living, so it’s questionable whether moving would increase my net income to make moving worth it.

I’ve lived in small cities for the last 32 years, two that were minuscule (60,000 population each), one just a bit bigger than Jishou (800,000) and another of 2.3 million. While it is generally true that living in a small community means a small salary, the trade-offs compensate for the comparative lack of dollars, or yuan.

Food costs are low. Taxi fares are low (since Jishou is so tiny). The people are friendly. If I should decide to rent an apartment, I could probably do it and not go broke. A friend here in Jishou showed me the three-bedroom flat she and her fiancé have bought for ¥240K (about $35,000). It’s got wood floors, a nice kitchen, big bath, and a view of the river. That kind of money might get you a squalid shoebox in Beijing.

And there’s the advantage of being one of very few foreigners around for miles. Western teachers in Beijing or Shanghai are a dime a dozen, and often treated that way by employers. Here, I get considerably more respect.

So I could get more money if I moved, but at a price.

Moving to a bigger market does not mean I would get better students, however. I’ve taught for 25 years, and I can’t imagine finding another group of students who are any more diligent and serious about their futures than the ones I have now.

One of my former JiDa students now working in Beijing told me she’s frustrated with some of her co-workers who graduated from the top unis like Xinhua U or Beijing U. “They’re bookworms,” Jaycee said. “They have no social skills.”

To get into a top university in China, a student has to score very well on the 高考 gaokao, the annual college entrance exam. Parents and schools program teenagers’ lives so densely with classes, tutors and test preparation courses that it’s no exaggeration to say some students have done nothing but study for the two years preceding the gaokao.

So, if you judged my students just on their gaokao scores, you might be inclined to believe they are second- or third-rate students.

But you would be very wrong.

As many American educators (but not politicians) know, test scores do not measure the quality of the student accurately. It’s one reason why American universities and colleges look at other indicators besides an applicant’s SAT or ACT scores: their extracurricular activities, grades, difficulty of courses, school location, family background, to name a few.

While I wish I could say my students are like the children in Lake Wobegon — all above average — I would not trade my students for all the tea in China. Certainly, a few are a little on the lazy side. Others are what we in the States might call “C students” — hard workers but lacking some extra ingredient that enables them to excel. But most of them are very good students. I care for each and every one, no matter what their grades.

Besides, I’ve learned almost all their names, at least their English ones.

My working conditions are pretty damn good, compared to the horror stories I have heard from other foreign teachers. My class sizes at JiDa are modest by Chinese standards, 25 to 40 students, so I can teach them effectively. I get paid on time every month. I get along well with my Chinese colleagues. I have a comfortable apartment, rent-free. If I need a jug of drinking water delivered to my flat, it comes within hours instead of days. My foreign affairs officers are extraordinarily helpful, and they speak really good English.

Then, there are personal considerations. I have friends in town, not just student friends who will someday leave Jishou. I can find my way around town almost entirely on my own. The weather here leaves a little to be desired, but it’s not much different from Louisville’s, and I put up with that for 25 years. The air is clean and breathable (except for downtown). There are no sandstorms, typhoons, earthquakes, or rioting.

It’s not idyllic. What place is? I am mourning the loss of two cherished friendships. One person whom I considered a dear friend has not talked to me since she left for Beijing a year ago. Another friendship I ruined myself by being culturally insensitive about male-female relationships in China; she and I are cordial to one another, but that’s about it for now. And there’s the little issue of being divorced after nearly 24 years of marriage. These feelings of course would follow me wherever I go.

For the time being, I see no reason to pull up stakes and go somewhere else. Been there, done that. As my Facebook page says, I’m happy in Hunan. We’ll see what another year has in store for me here.

Basically, the storm drains can’t seem to handle the runoff, and the area around the dorms and the stadium ends up with knee-deep water. Someone took a video of the flooding last week, and uploaded it to www.youku.com, one of China’s answers to Youtube.

The title, “吉首大学校园再次被淹” (Jishou Daxue Xiao Yuan Zai Ci Bei Yan), means “Jishou University Campus Flooded Once Again.” You can see the street between the stadium and the dorms, where a bus is parked, the greens near the dorms, people walking along the sidewalks, some stores, and workers setting up temporary “bridges” so the students can get out of their dorms to go eat or take their exams.

My dorm is on the top of a hill, so we send all our rainwater down to the student dorms. So thoughtful we are.

Incidentally, Youku is one of the best sites to watch TV and movies online. There are English language movies, too. If you visit that link, the quick navigation menu is along the top of the page. This is the link for TV: 电视剧; and this is for movies: 电影.

From left to right, the menu items are: 首页 (Home Page), 世界杯 (The World Cup), TV, movies, 综艺 (variety entertainment), 视频 (video), 空间 (user space), 看吧 (kanba, which has a variety of videos, including COSplay), and 分类 (classifications, which gives you a drop down menu of specific topics).

You can download videos from Youku, but you have to install their downloader. The other big video-sharing site is www.tudou.com, which does not require a downloader. More about that later.

The university is running out of dormitory spaces, so last month the uni tore down an unused water treatment plant and started construction of a new dorm, right down the hill from my humble abode. The project has included drilling and jackhammering though the limestone for the foundations and underground whatnot. Constantly. It starts around 6:30 am and, except for meal breaks, continues all frakking day until about 11:30 at night.

It’s like having Con Edison outside your apartment almost 24-7. (Sorry, that’s a New York reference, but substitute your local utility company — “dig we must” — if it makes you happier.)

The jackhammers stopped about 10 days ago, thank the stars. Now we just have to listen to two of these impact drills banging away all day.

I’ve been watching the construction as it progresses. Considering rate at which they are working, I am guessing that the uni wants this new dorm finished and ready to be used before the fall term starts in September. So far, the crew has built three retaining wall from concrete, mortar and chunks of limestone wrested from the hillside, and chiseled out the trenches for the foundation walls.

A self-erecting crane was set down about two weeks ago. The boom on this sucker is long enough that it skims the treetops next to my apartment building. I was on my balcony one day and the sight of the boom swinging in my direction made me instinctively duck. The boom is just about level with my apartment.

Crane skimming the trees near my building

Jishou rests in a valley between two lines of low mountains, so if the university wants to expands, it has to crawl up the side of the mountains to the east of campus. The apartments for foreign teachers and students, and many postgrads lies on the top of one of those hills. Here’s a view from the roof of my building.

View from the top of my building

As a friend of mine used to say, “Progress sucks,” but we need more dorms. At least I am not right next door. I have no idea how those folks are coping with the noise.

When I left China, I was pretty sure my flight to Changsha was just a few hours after my arrival in Pudong Airport. No shuttle bus trips, no worries. But I had no idea what flight I would take, since my foreign affairs officer had worked out the details.

So, as soon as I disembarked from United 835, I connected to China Mobile and sent him a message: “When is my flight?” His reply: “Bad news, it’s been canceled” Turns out I had to go to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport after all to catch a different flight. No biggie, I thought, Another 30 RMB bus fare with plenty of time to catch the domestic flight.

Puh-lenty of time.

Due to stormy weather around Changsha, my flight was delayed not one, not two, but five freaking hours! My 9 pm flight from Hongqiao Airport eventually left at 3 am!

At one point, I fell completely asleep across four chairs, only to wake scared shitless I had missed my flight. I hadn’t. There were still two hours to go.

I had booked a hotel in Changsha and told my friend F. to expect me around dinnertime. Instead, I sent her a message to say I had no idea when I would arrive. She (bless her heart) paid the hotel in advance so I would have definitely have place to sleep once I arrived.

Which I did, finally. At 5 am in the effing morning. I arrived at the hotel at the same time as a couple who may or may not have known each other previous to that night, if you catch my meaning. (They had no luggage.)

Soon I had that nice bed I had wanted to sleep on for the past 38 hours. I managed I wake up in time for lunch and shopping at Carrefour, then went to dinner that evening. With only a day left to my already short Changsha sojourn, I really didn’t want to waste time by sleeping too much.

Here was my plan. Arrive in Changsha Feb. 9, hang out with friends, go shopping, etc., then leave Feb. 12 to return to Jishou to spend New Year’s Eve with a friend’s family. Instead, I arrived in Changsha early the morning of Feb. 10, so I had only a day and half there.

Anyways, on the 11th, I had lunch with the family I was going to Sanya with. We ate at Houcaller (豪客来 Hao Ke Lai), a chain steakhouse, which is near my hotel. A few hours later, I ate there again with F. and her sister (they really wanted to go), but this time I had the chicken.

The next morning, I took the motorcoach to Jishou, to finally arrive at what I now consider my home.

As I have mentioned before, Jishou is not particularly beautiful or noteworthy. Situated midway between two tourist attractions — Zhangjiajie and Fenghuang — it’s more of a whistlestop for travelers than a destination. For a small city, it’s traffic is horrible, especially downtown, and for Westerners there is a paucity of edible Western food. For a college town, the nightlife is pretty limited to karaoke clubs and a few night clubs (which few college students frequent anyway).

So, when I tell people I like it here, they don’t believe me. If I moved to a larger city, I could make much more money teaching, have more access to Western goods and other native English speakers, have more things to do in my free time, and (as I realized this holiday) have an easier time getting to places outside China.

But, having lived in small cities and huge cities, I can tell you that folks in small cities are for the most part friendlier and more open, especially if you are a Westerner in China. I feel very welcome and appreciated here, since I am not one of the dime-a-dozen Americans strolling the streets of Beijing (for example). I am usually welcomed as an honored guest. I admit that, after 18 months, the adulation has kind of gone to my head. Besides, I’ve made many good friends here. My students are wonderful (though not all are excellent academically). I get paid on time, and my working hours are fewer than I have ever had in my life, even with my tutoring gigs on the side.

So, what’s not to love?

When I arrived at my apartment, I entered a pig sty. When I left the month before, I was pressed for time and did not leave my apartment in the best shape. Yes, I did power off everything but the fridge and shut off the LP tank, but the floor was filthy, the kitchen was a mess, and I discovered with some dismay that I had left a meat dish to fester in the fridge. A person is supposed to have a clean house for the New Year. Mine was nowhere close.

And the fridge stank.

So, I didn’t really have time to relax. I unpacked, washed clothes, cleaned house as best I could, and got some basic food items (But not fresh baked bread. The bakers at Jun Hua Supermarket had the holiday week off.) My hostess, N., was going to meet me around 12 pm on the 13th (New Year’s Eve), and take me to her family’s home near JiDa. Her dad, a businessman, lives there with his second wife, their young daughter and his parents.

[China has a growing number of blended and single-parent families, as the stigma against divorce is waning. Divorced women, however, have a hard time finding new husbands, since there is a cultural double-standard. Chinese men prefer previously unmarried women as brides.]

The lunar New Year’s Eve in China is a big, big family thing. We set off firecrackers before sitting down for a big dinner. (The firecracker’s noise scares away the Nian 年, which might otherwise steal food, livestock and children to eat.) We watched the annual New Year’s gala on CCTV, the national TV network. They taught me to play xiangqi 象棋, or Chinese chess. Three of us played against N.’s grandpa, who beat us handily three times. After we watched the city’s fireworks display at midnight, we had another meal before calling it a night at 2 am. (Some families stay up until dawn, but it’s not a universal custom.)

In the days following, I puttered around the house, visited with Jishou friends, and basically just chilled out. The last part of my holiday was approaching: a week in sunny Sanya, China’s Hawai’i.

At 3 pm, there was a light cloud cover and 86 degrees F. At dinner, one of my friends got a call from her boyfriend in Changsha, who told her the temperature had plummeted to the 60′s, it was raining, and a northerly wind was blowing hard. (The gusty wind also locked him out of his home: the wind slammed the door against the wall, pushing in the lock button, then slammed it shut … while he was outside and his keys inside.)

Sure enough, by the time we finished dinner at Will Long Cake (they do serve more than cake there; it’s like a Dairy Queen Brazier, but not as greasy), it was cold, gusty and starting to rain. Right now (10:30) it is pouring outside, and I just turned on the heater.

Of course, I shouldn’t complain. The Philippines just got clobbered again by another typhoon, the third in the last five weeks.

Then another a day later. According to some (unverified) reports, perhaps eight more students may be infected as well.

Jishou University has four campuses. The first student diagnosed with H1N1 lives at the old campus, near downtown. The second lives here at the new campus. Their roommates are being monitored as we speak.
I haven’t heard any bad news from the other two campuses, medical and foreign languages.

Our students have had the fear of God (or something like it, since China is officially atheist) put into them at meetings earlier this week. Wash your hands. Cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze or cough. Throw your tissues away immediately. Don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth. If you feel ill or feverish, go directly to the school clinic, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

My foreign affairs officer, Cyril Hu, called me to his office this morning to give me an oral thermometer (A mercury one! The USA has all but abolished those.) and two sheets of instructions (in Chinese!?) about what precautions to take against the swine flu.

Meanwhile, rumors and fears are bubbling through the student community. One girl texted me to say there were “several” people down with the flu. Another student on QQ told me she had heard the uni would ban any travel during the upcoming eight-day National Holiday break. Both rumors proved to be false.

The same student on QQ said she was reluctant to study in the library, or even in her dormitory (she has nine roommates), since we are supposed to avoid crowds. She advised me to avoid going to the old campus or even downtown to go shopping for the same reason.

I told her I would be cautious, and advised her to do the same, but not to be fearful. Just the same, she told me she bought some medicine to help ward off the illness. She didn’t tell me what.

Chinese officials say there have been only two deaths out of the 4,400 confirmed cases of H1N1 infection so far. Most people are getting ill with fairly mild symptoms and recovering within a few days.

But, the swine flu is spreading quickly. Since we just finished summer break, many students have poured in from all parts of Hunan, including the capital, Changsha, where there have been at last nine confirmed cases. Many students also traveled over the summer to the big cities, like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where there are many more international travelers. Students and tourists are the vectors for the virus. It was just a matter of time before H1N1 came to our little neck of the woods.

China’s government, which early on was requiring all airline passengers to be checked before they even got off the plane, will soon start a nationwide vaccination program against the flu. Schoolchildren will be the first to receive the vaccine.

[I can just imagine the hue and cry in the USA were the Obama administration to attempt something like that!]

With a population of 1.3 billion, many of whom live in crowded cities, China has the right to be worried. The juggernaut of manufacturing the world’s consumer goods can’t afford (literally) to get sick.

I’m not worried. I’ll follow orders and wash my hands a lot, take my temperature once a day, and call my FAO if I feel sick or if the mercury rises. And I’ll keep an eye on my students, too.