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JISHOU, HUNAN — I am one happy camper tonight, because I discovered how to circumvent China’s blocking of Picasaweb. The solution was right there in front of me, if I had bothered to look.
In their ineffable wisdom, the wonks at Google allow you to upload photos to Picasaweb via email. All you need to do is go to Picasaweb’s settings and set up a secret email addy. Then you can emails to that address with photos as attachments. The subject line is the name of an existing album.
Sweet!
Because China is blocking Picasaweb and Blogger, both Google services, I have had a hell of time uploading to my Picasaweb albums. For a while, I could upload using Picasa 3, the desktop application, then mysteriously uploads would constantly fail. Either the uploads would stall, or I would get the message, “This account is not enabled for web albums.” First, I suspected a bug in Picasaweb (like THAT would ever happen!), but it appears some service or port is being blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
I can use the latest version of Ultrasurf (v.9.98) to climb the Great Firewall, and access Picasaweb to edit photos and such, but uploads still fail, either from Picasa 3 or on the website itself. Timeout problems, or connection problems because of the proxy service.
So, as they say, RTFM. I went to the help pages, and lo! You can email your pix to Picasaweb. Duh. I should guessed that.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — One of my Facebook followers left me a message, complaining that she hadn’t heard much from me lately. So, this one’s for you, Angela!
The spring term ended here on July 15, but I gave my exams much earlier than that, on July 1 and 2. While my students prepped for their other exams, I read their research papers and composition exams. For a solid week. After reading several second and third drafts of the papers, I finally handed in my grades on July 14.
But I was not entirely free yet. The parents of some of the students I had been tutoring during the fall and spring wanted me to continue their lessons for the rest of July. Fortunately, not everyone wanted the summer classes, so I only had eight students in all, and most of them could come to my apartment for lessons. Some days I taught for three hours, others for four; and Sundays I was free.
I’ll tell some anecdotes about these kids now.  Me and some of my primary students; from left, Julie, Sally, Marike, Jane, Shawn and Billie Marike is 9. Her daily schedule during the summer included an hour of violin lessons, two hours with me, and two hours of writing (calligraphy) lessons. She did not get a midday nap. (During the school year, Marike had “panda eyes” when I would see her on Sunday mornings.) One of our summer lessons was a two-person dialogue about shopping. I thought it was pretty easy, but our insistence that Marike (a shy girl) do the dialogue with her friend made her break down in tears. She was just too tired to put up with it, she said. For the next lesson, we played Scrabble, which was less intimidating and the kids really enjoyed.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — So, I’m staying another year here. As it was last year, the decision was an easy one to make.
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.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I think one of my students just came out to me. Or maybe the student was just sharing about a friend coming out. Hard to say.
My students have to keep diaries, which they hand in about every other week. I read them, make lots of red marks in them, and hand them back a week later (usually). Most of the entries are pretty mundane, but occasionally a student will reveal his or her deepest emotions, worries, troubles or thoughts. I usually respond by writing something in their diary, since I assume the student is attempting some kind of dialogue that may be less embarrassing than talking face to face.
Since I’m sworn to secrecy on this particular matter, and all the other personal items in the diaries, I am going to be deliberately vague here. I teach about 300 students, none of whom will likely see this post, but gossip transcends space and time. I am leaving out a lot of details. I am not going to say whether the student is male or female. I will refer to the student only as A., a letter which has no connection to A.’s English or Chinese name.
(Note to my Chinese students abroad using Facebook. Please DO NOT talk about this article with anyone at JiDa. 谢谢阿!)
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I am in the midst of reading the first drafts of about 70 term papers, but I wanted to take time out to write about a couple of cool things that happened today.
One of my former students here in China is getting married next week. This was no big surprise, since she told me it was going to happen sometime this year. Today, when we went to lunch, T. threw me a couple of curve balls.
First, she’s pregnant — one of those happy little accidents that sometimes proceed marriage. Despite the conservative culture of China, being pregnant just before marriage is no big deal, as long as the husband-to-be is still in the picture. The funny thing was, when I accidentally ran into the two of them downtown yesterday, I thought to myself, “T. looks pregnant.”
Now, she’s only three months along, and not showing yet. (T. is very petite, and has not gained weight, so her size was not the reason for my hunch.) But, she was walking a little like a pregnant woman — her shoes were the problem there, she says — and her dress was similar in design to a maternity dress, gathered under her boobs. Purely accidental, T. says; it was a summer dress, and anyway she still has a tiny waist. Despite being wrong about all the obvious visual clues, I was still pretty impressed I had guessed correctly.
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 Sally L. JISHOU, HUNAN — Yesterday was Children’s Day in China, and in my oral English class I asked students to talk about their influential childhood memories. One girl, Sally L., had an especially moving story.
Sally’s parents are farmers and have two daughters. Her uncle, meanwhile, also farms and has at least one son. She related an argument between her father, his brother and Sally’s grandfather that left a deep impression on her 7-year-old mind.
Since she was so young, Sally says she can’t remember all the details of the argument, but it involved her uncle wanting some the land her father owned, but was not at the time cultivating. Her father refused to give it to his brother, and in no time at all, the four men — father, uncle, grandfather and even her male cousin — were yelling at each other and threatening to get physical. The outcome was that Sally’s parents retained possession of the land.
Her uncle wanted the land because he had a son, while Sally’s dad had daughters. In rural China, boys are held in higher esteem than girls, so the uncle apparently believed keeping the land for two daughters was a complete waste of good farmland. Instead, he wanted his brother to give it to him and his son, because boys are “worth more” than girls and can do more than girls.
“That’s why my dream was to go to university,” Sally told us, “because I wanted to show them that girls can be as good as boys, or even better.”
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Along with rains and peach blossoms, April here brings another spring event, the undergraduate English speaking contests.
As I did last year, I have served as a judge for several college contests, including my own college’s, and will of course judge the university finals next month. It’s a task I both enjoy and dread, because quite frankly it’s not that easy to be a judge for these things.
Case in point: my college had nearly a dozen sophomores participate in our competition, from which we judges had to choose two to represent the College of International Exchange next month. The criteria include the usual for public speaking — content, argument, stage presence, eye contact, inflection, diction — but also pronunciation, intonation and grammar. After all, these students are speaking a foreign language.
We found six who we judged as competitive, but could not narrow them down to two. Some had good public speaking skills, but their spoken English was lacking in some ways. Meanwhile, those who had very good spoken English lacked some public speaking skills.
What a headache!
The university, and the provincial and national contests, all include a three-minute prepared speech, a question-answer session, then a two-minute impromptu speech. Last year, there were questions on the impromptu, also, but I hear that section might be eliminated.
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