Book ends

We went cross-town last weekend to a Chinese doctor, a old, sagely, genuinely traditional earnest Chinese doctor, who operated out of a non-descript room in an old housing complex. He was a great guy, had said my blood was toxic and that's why I still have pimples on my shoulders. Fair enough, but on this particular day, he wasn't in. We were greeted with his door closed and a simple paper sign suggesting he wouldn't be in for the next few days. It wasn't a trip in vain as we got to see one of the most extraordinary sights of my two and a half years in China: from a narrow path in the complex came a topless teen riding an old bicycle in the process of putting on a t-shirt. Think a moment. You're on a bike, following twisting and turning paths, one hand on the handles and the other hand trying to pull a t-shirt over your head. How does that work? He actually couldn't get the t-shirt past his head. Don't try this at home, and definitely not in the narrow corner-ridden alleys of an old housing area. He struggled with the shirt. Didn't peddle. Missed us. Came close to a wall, somehow knew it. Turned at a right angle. Still couldn't get the shirt off his head and out of the way of his eyes. Turned another right angle and into the clear, where he managed to shake shirt down to his shoulders and, removing both hands from the handle bars to pull it over the rest of him. Genius!   Now I only raise this because I was profoundly disappointed by the doctor's absence. Not because of the lack of a diagnosis and prescription, but because I brought a book for this visit to the doctor. Which I wouldn't be reading this time. Queueing is an inevitability in China, and I had prepared my book for the long wait and I really wanted to read the book. Instead we'd be going somewhere else, where books were harder to read. So apart from seeing a miracle of instinctive blind control of a bike, I couldn't continue my book, and this was annoying. For once more my mind was obsessed with literature. Perhaps you don't know what it's like.   When I study Chinese, language takes up all my non-essential time outside work. I love language to bits. Witness the blogs dissecting Qingyuan dialect! But in a sea of hanzi, dialect, four character phrases and xiehouyu, one's brain does yearn for the familiar. Twice in these two years my brain has gone through a stretch of just wanting English literature. It desires it like water to a thirsty desert dweller. I'd see a book and I want to just ingest every word and paragraph. And then sated, I can go back to Chinese study with diligence and application. I haven't got to that point yet though. On our honeymoon I ripped through Mildred Pierce a great Depression era novel by an American author (James M. Cain) who no-one seems to know much about, but his work made The Postman Always Rings Twice (a movie I'd heard of but not seen). He wrote it in 1941, but we only bought it in Hong Kong because it had Kate Winslett on the cover. Apparently she'd starred in the mini-series, which I have since bought on DVD but also haven't seen. (500 minutes of Kate Winslett isn't a hard sell for me, but with other competing things to watch it'd knock out a fair few nights of entertainment.)   But that hardly stopped my hunger. Next I cracked into Crime and Punishment, an even older book written in 1866 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was a struggle for 80 pages and after that it compelled me at every free moment of the day. Except in the bathroom where I read the much more contemporary About a Boy, by Nick Hornby, which was made into a movie with Hugh Grant. An adorable, cringe movie but likeable nonethe less. I like the idea of always having a book in the bathroom, or a newspaper or magazine at the least. I've always had short Chinese stories to read there, now I munch through a cutely written book fiction book in English.   While I had those two going, I decided to start my third book simultaneously: Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, a gentleman who'd been in China since the early nineties. This non-fiction book, though in English, I was still surprised to be able to buy and read this in China. It has some outstandingly sharp observations about China and politics, and one of his widely quoted acquaintances was a Uighur (a "Chinese" minority, pronounced wee-ger) with a hatred for Han Chinese (the majority) and quick with incendiary comments. Probably the reason for my dabbling with a third book is that one of my basest literary desires is non-fiction.   Crime and Punishment ended yesterday, the punishment had to come, and I've begun to rattle through Oracle Bones. Hopefully my yen for reading will last to the end of the other two books. And then? Mandarin, Cantonese and Qingyuan dialect will no doubt greet me with open arms and added zeal, especially before Dragon Boat festival, when I'll go back to Qingyuan and my diet will be set. There's nothing like urgency to switch one's priorities.

The Silence of Time

Cocktail parties are de rigeur in our school chain these days. It started back when my second creative, but barely tolerable, centre manager had it as an idea: it took; it sold and other centres just had to follow the same line.   Our centre is the fourth to give it a shot and though it feels a little disorganised, it should be fun and taking place tonight. (I'm sending this after midnight.) You can't just make cocktails though: you need activities. And we have activities. And of course I need to do an activity, too.   Our most versatile local teacher didn't know what he was going to do. He wasn't familiar with cocktail parties enough, so I threw an idea out there: The Double D Variety Show. (Our names both start with D, if you should be thinking the wrong thing.) We had hoped that students would queue up to perform in some way. We were disappointed. We only had a few takers and that left a lot of time for the hosts to construct "games" and activities.   I decided on an activity one morning: I'd ask the crowd if they know what hypnotism was. And then explain it, and elaborate that the other D had been hypnotising me over the week to get me to do something special at this party. He'd then ask me: Do you know how to speak Chinese? Do you know any Chinese songs? Both of these I'd deny and pretend to be on his idea. He'd clap his hands and my head would sink limply and he'd speak to the audience about his plan, saying that when I heard certain music I'd believe I was a Chinese rock star and even prepare a student with a yellow card, the punishment for staff who speak Chinese in our centre. He'd clap me back awake and then play the music. My face would tense. I'd grab a marker and then sing my favourite Cantonese rock song, well the first verse until he'd put an end to it. And clap me back to consciousness, and the denial and the punishment.   A great gag. I hope it works. I hope I don't laugh. And I hope I don't pull a blank in front of a crowd. Singing a song in front of people would be a new thing. Karaoke is different. Everyone is doing it and not many would look at you, and you can stare at a screen for support. Fingers crossed.   Singing a song in another language without support is a little bit like driving around a curly racetrack. Once you start a verse it is fairly easy to go on, but get to a corner and you either make it or spin. There are several hairpin turns in this song - once I say one tricky sequence, it'll follow it up with a sucker punch line. Well, that's how it seems.   It is important to know that 98% of my students don't know I can speak any Chinese; and the other 2% just have suspicions that they can't quite confirm. At my last school I was spotted reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the subway; at my first school, I was overheard telling a cleaner where to put something. But I've been largely free of suspicion: Probably, most will be suspicious after this performance. They will either have to believe that the second D can hypnotise or at the very least I can remember whole tracts of Cantonese and produce largely with correct pronunciation... Is it worth the gag?   The song I'll sing is called the Silence of Time, and starts outrageously: I've down a thousand cups yet aren't drunk. An appropriate line to start the partying, you'd think.

The snag

I've recently had what the Chinese term "twin happiness arriving at my door", which is not twins as you might suppose, but two blessings; in my case, marriage and a promotion. Married life has been good. Especially now that the excitement and bustle is over. Promoted life has been good! I've enjoyed and thrived on the new sense of responsibility and my team respond to me well.   But so soon, 55 days into this brand new world of management it seems that one of those happiness might soon come to an end. It will be my first direct experience of restructuring, and one of many experiences of when they get a cold in Shanghai, the whole company starts coughing. Inefficiencies there meant local restructuring that now will apply to every region, regardless of how efficient they may have been. Now the five directors in my city are competing for two positions. The other three will need to find places to go to within or without, and if none of those fit we'll be a shoe in if we choose to demote. And even if one were to become one of the two it is more work for the same money. (Which is not to say the idea of the position is not an interesting one.)   Going from the newest kid on the block to the first "on the block" didn't take long! I'd rate my odds as lowest due to time served alone, although I'll still go through the process of applying for one of the two berths. I do have my advantages and it depends on the intentions and options considered by others. We're all pretty philosophical about it and we're all good friends to boot.   The timeline is not long. So I'll be really putting my best foot forward in the next few weeks to show that I'm doing my job best.

Penang

There were omens. Once the date was set for our marriage registration, we went to travel agents to work out our honeymoon arrangements, but quickly discovered Wednesday and Thursday departures were scarce. We had wanted to go to Thailand but an earthquake and tsunami warnings caused a lot of people to cancel plans, and airlines to cancel flights - and we wanted direct flights as well. Then we discovered a mid-week flight to Penang - but departures were arriving at 10:00pm and the return flight would leave Penang at 9:05am, meaning that we'd lose both travel days completely. Penang won out though - the idea of three whole days of swimming, eating and sleeping was to powerful.

Fast-forward to the plane descending above Malaysia, the captain spoke first in Mandarin: "....It's raining in Penang, with a temperature of 19 degrees." We took a double-take and waited for the English to confirm the inclement forecast. As it did, we shivered: we had only summer clothes. On the ground, we found a taxi and told the Indian driver to take us to Hydro Hotel, and prodded him about the weather. He said it had been like this for a week. It was raining everyday and was this cool. He weaved through the traffic on a "1 hour" taxi ride to the hotel. When we pulled in, it took a moment to figure out why we were at Hardrock Cafe Hotel. I said our hotel name again. He sighed, pulled back onto the road and criticised my accent.

We backtracked 10 minutes around the coast to our hotel - and despite the omens - everything from then went off like a dream. The weather was as we had imagined prior - hot with occasional thunderstorms bustling and bristling by. Malaysia is reliable for a good range of food and warm water beaches. Three whole days in Penang was never going to be enough but it was a nice time to refresh.

The first lick

Summer gave us a healthy, sloppy kiss over the May Day holiday. The comfortable spring temperatures gave way to the sapping, sweaty, saunaesque summery weather that occupies Guangzhou for half a year. The difference of a month and a half since I was in Qingyuan for New Year is so clear: the depth of winter matching close to a heatwave that matches most in the middle of summer. Or is it a omen for a steamer unlike no other.   Either way, it was a reminder that my body is ill-equipped for this climate. My body presented a mystery in the first year, hypothesized itself in the second year and confirmed itself in the third: my body takes time to adjust. Psychologically I'm fine with heat but my digestive system, my nervous system and circulatory system beg to differ. After eating my first mouthfuls of dinner at QIngyuan, I asked to leave upstairs for the comfort of a fan and the chance to lie horizontally. My stomach didn't want food, my appetite disappeared. My brain was cloudy; I could barely understand Chinese; my chess ability had been cowed. My heart felt a-flutter and my body just felt so hot. Recent days in similar weather I've coped better and started to adjust. It's just par for the course.   I'm not sure if I'm doing any better but I'm not doing any worse. In a few days this will be a memory, yet I'll still be sweating. Summer is here. Barefoot days. Shirtless days. Days on the balcony drinking tea. Swimming in the mornings. Sudden downpours. Air conditioners puffing bursts as you walk by. Girls in less than usual. Guys doing their paunch-shows. Slip-ons, jandals, and mosquitoes biting the flesh in between.

Qingyuan dialect: Comparative phonology

The last post about the predictive power of Japanese to guess the differences between Japanese and Qingyuan Cantonese might give one the wrong idea. The Japanese sound of the words might still be less similar than the sounds of Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect to the sounds that were being predicted. Guangzhou Cantonese (QC) sounds are most similar to GC but when there is a difference between the two one wonders where it comes from. Perhaps to understand why I would spend time poring over other Asian languages it might be helpful to explain my previous discarded assumptions.   Despite some familiarity with GC, when I arrived in Qingyuan I was not comprehensible to them nor they to me. It was like a student who'd only learnt basic NZ English arriving in Glasgow. Qingyuan was one of the Guangdong cities with large Hakka populations; in fact, the family I've been with are descendants of Hakka. The grandfather's mother tongue is Hakka yet raised his family in QC (which he also speaks natively). My first thought was that Hakka might have influenced the Cantonese of the city. There are some word choices that were similar (they have the same non-GC non-Mandarin way of saying peanuts, di-daau, for example). But further checking of some of the GC/QC differences came up short: Hakka could not explain some of the sounds or variance.   QC has several word choices that differ from GC. Take off (shoes/clothes) in GC is cheui, whereas in QC it is tyut; this is the same character as tuo in Mandarin. Yesterday in GC is kamyat but zoyat in QC; this is same characters as Mandarin again, zuori. So I wondered whether it might have been moderated by Mandarin in some way. But even more strongly, Mandarin if anything is the least predictive of any dialect or language to explain some of the pronunciation differences, less so than Hakka.   Why shouldn't neighboring or influential languages predict these? Perhaps, word choices can travel between dialects but actual pronunciation is like the genes of a language. If the languages are different breeds, they don't often mix. (I can think of only one circumstance where they would feasibly do so but it isn't the case for GC/QY so I'll keep it to myself.) Just like German wouldn't absorb French or English vowels, so wouldn't QC accept the sounds of Hakka or Mandarin, even if word choices were transferrable.   Which of course brings me onto Korean and Japanese, which both predict many features of Qingyuan effectively. I've got enough basic fluency and awareness of both to be able to crank out the analysis easily. Korean nailed (100% predictivity) a frustrating difference between GC/QC. QC speakers say sounds ending -i in GC as either -i or -yu; for example, zi (to know) is the same in the two dialects; yet zi (self) in GC is zyu in QC. At first, Mandarin seem to predict some but not all (about 70%). Then I recalled a strange difference when learning Korean.   I learnt Korean after Mandarin had became a strong second language for me. When learning Korean (a phonetic alphabet) I'd often notice the words that came from Chinese and guess the characters that they came from. Like Japanese, it had "Cantonese features": end sounds that Mandarin no longer has. But there were some sounds in Korean that didn't make sense to my Mandarin-mind. In Mandarin two words might be said "shi" but in Korean it would be either "si" or "sa". So I'd have to make sure I learnt the different ones well so not to overgeneralise from Mandarin (letting my L2 affect my L3, a common problem for many students with other languages). Recalling this, suddenly I realised that all the Korean "-i" were "-i" in QC, and all the "-a" sounds that corresponded to "-i" words in GC were "-yu" in QC. I'll be doing the final check when I go back for May Day holidays. Another mystery solved!   Having the same thoughts solved another anomaly, this time Japanese predicts when QC would use an ng- initial versus no initial. There are only a couple of other particular distinctions that aren't explained (yet) by going back, or is that across, to Japanese and Korean. Which really makes you wonder why these two languages predict so well.   Both Korean and Japanese have phonetic alphabets. Phonetic alphabets are like film in a camera when exposed to a foreign language. Both Japanese and Korean were exposed to a form of Ancient Chinese, absorbed many of the words and found a way to write down those sounds with the alphabets they had. 60% of Korean vocabulary originates from Ancient Chinese. Japanese may have a similar quantity mostly borrowed in the 5th - 9th centuries CE. This ancient sound interpretation process noted differences and attempted to reflect that. That these sound differences don't exist in Mandarin or GC, yet do in QC is an interesting surprise.   Though most of the energy of discovery has gone from my rampant comparative phonology, this field trip into the depths of this language and these languages has yielded some interesting common sense that are useful as a lens to understand any language, its evolution and the curiosities within. It has been a trip worthwhile.

Qingyuan dialect: The ancient sound of Chinese?

It started with a curious discovery. Some time ago I noticed Qingyuan cantonese (QC) using a non-Guangzhou cantonese sound "kyu" for the word district (usually keui in Guangzhou cantonese, GC) and marked it down. Then, slowly, I noticed more examples: hyu for empty (heui in GC) and gyu for geui (raise) and others. It presented a difficulty at first because the terminal -eui usually was pronounced -ui for most words (heui-hui, go; seui-sui, water; etc.); since my base knowledge of Cantonese was GC, if I wanted to say an -eui ending word I couldn't be sure if it were pronounced -ui or -yu.   I decided to do a background check on the sounds with an online dictionary and noticed that in most cases the words which become -yu in QC were pronounced -i in Hakka Chinese. To be clear, I don't know any Hakka, but it had been my theory that QC might have been influenced and inflected by Hakka (it is in a Hakka region). After checking all the examples, it was clear Hakka only helped distinguish them 75% of the time.   I decided on another tack, one that may sound a little odd: I decided to use Japanese kanji pronunciation to distinguish them. One of the unexpected benefits of having studied Japanese is that I understood the rhyme schemes of Chinese poetry better than the students who only knew Mandarin. Japanese preserves a lot of the sound and characteristics of Chinese from a particular time in Chinese dialectual development (usually said to be the Tang or Song dynasties). For poetry, Japanese kanji pronunciations show ending sounds well that Mandarin has lost, but Cantonese has preserved.    So I cross-checked it through Japanese and found that Japanese predicts the sounds that are different -eui/yu to a success rate 95% of the time. (The three sounds hyu/kyu/gyu are pronounced kyo, ku and ku in Japanese onyomi.) There was only one failed test: heui (go) is pronounced hui in QC* yet kyo in Japanese on yomi. This is just one aspect but quite an eye-opening one to test out on other GC/QC distinctions.   I found this article during my search: "In the 1990s, Akitani Hiroyuki, a linguistics professor at Ehime University (Japan), come to Qingyuan and found medieval and even ancient sound were well-preserved in Qingyuan dialect. After years of in-depth researches, Wu Qiushi holds that Qingyuan is the only one place where Mandarin Chinese of Tang and Song Dynasties are so well preserved."   I don't know what the good professor saw, but I've found one too!   *Apparently there are people/dialects who say this word "hyu" but I've never met them.

I am the captain of this ship!

For what has been a frenetic start to the year, it is a relief that the reward does in fact come in the end. Since April Fools Day, I have been Director of Studies (DoS) of my school. Also since April Fools Day, I've been either on my weekend, on leave, or not in the office due to the national holiday of Tomb Sweeping Day. So my first day in the office as the captain is today. I'd taken over most of the duties of DoS during the last month, but still had my previous boss on hand to guide, model some of the more advanced job tasks and support. Now it's just me. And for now, it's great!   I'm now a list maker. When I get into work, or even before I get to work on the bus, or even before I get on the bus at home, or even before I should be getting up from bed, or even before I go to bed, I make lists of tasks that need to be done, things that need to be said, e-mails that need to be replied to, problems that need to be solved. Each task starts with a box that will need to be ticked. That complements other systems to make sure that the things I forget to do are a few as possible. For sleep, lists are important too. They are the place to deposit thoughts and ideas so they don't harass you in the wee hours.   DoS was of course my stated goal of coming to China. But getting the job needless to say isn't the completion of the goal. It is to learn all the functions, to learn the skills and gather the experience so I can be a capable academic manager. So I guess it begins now.

Upane Kupane in the Dragon year

Dragon roars and dragon hugs! Well, that has been my greeting to people in the new year. The new year holidays were spent well in the coldest phase of this (comparatively warm) winter, in Qingyuan of course, bouncing from one relative's uninsulated place to another, drinking one alcoholic beverage (or another) and dining within my narrow gustatory limitations. We might be on the verge of the first real break in the back of this mild winter, and then it'll be a month of spring before the radiator of summer starts to crank out the steam.   Dragon roars, indeed! This year has started with more than just a hiss. Just prior to the new year's break, I received a flash of what was ahead: an email explained that the new management in my company changed the process for becoming a Director of Studies (DoS), the position that I basically came to China to occupy, and I was on the list of people due to be interviewed to evaluate my competencies. The interview, odd in its own way, was more of a conversation; the feedback was simple: I am deemed ready to be a DoS and may be one as early as April.   The new system is on the surface a logical one. Rather than latent applicants waiting for an opening within the company to spring into interview mode, the company now interviews pro-actively without an opening to mark those ready to take the reins, or to provide an action plan to those who aren't. It seems a simple concept (there have been later developments that show perhaps it isn't as idealistic, and more of a very pragmatic step, but I've got a promotion, I shan't speak ill of it further). As my current boss mused, despite the gloss it is still the same game with a few different rules: make those above like you and you win. Stand by your principles and prepare to wait.   Dragon hugs, indeed! My steps toward matrimony have been progressing smoothly even if my ideal of a Chinese wedding were thwarted. The Chinese concept of marriage is an odd one, not based on a moment or ceremony, but of an evolution of steps - and in these modern steps, no step in itself is necessarily essential. Legally, you need to have a formal marriage certificate, for which you need to go to (queue) in an official government bureau to say your vows and sign. That part barely needs two New Zealand dollars to do. Marriage is cheap. (That being said, the documents for marriage and organising yourself for marriage if you are a foreigner or out-of-household Chinese person can be expensive.) But some people don't do this because for most families a wedding banquet is what really makes you married in the eyes of people. It must be accompanied on the day by deistic ceremonies to separate the bride from her ancestral line and free her up to be reconnected onto that of the groom. Offerings have to be made to the ancestors (they are to attend after all). The banquet is open to everyone - you don't leave anyone off the guest list unless they're very distantly related. It is a witnessing process and there is no small reception option. It's either big or not at all. There aren't any vows at the banquet. The bride and groom offer tea to the groom's parents on the day, as they are becoming the bride's new family. But a couple doesn't have to do both the banquet and the registration; we could live with just one, and we have decided that our Chinese marriage status will rest only on the former, which is merely a legal recognition. Our marriage ceremony will have to wait till we can conveniently do it in New Zealand.   One modern ceremony for weddings is the "bridal veil photos". Of course, photos may be taken at the banquet or the registration, but they are not what are considered wedding photos in China. Hunsha zhao ("bridal veil photos") are almost essential. This involves, in its modern manifestation, a trip to a scenic spot with lots of different costumes, with a photographer in tow to take beautifully posed/staged photos of the couple. It is tiring, expensive, photoshopped and in my eyes, tacky, an opinion I shared quite early on. And fortunately it was one met with some sense of understanding. Cameras will be waiting till we get to New Zealand.   Marriage as an evolution is of course much more realistic to how it really is, although the western idea of a moment that seals the commitment is not only tradition but focusses the change down to a very sacred moment. I remember asking her younger brother whether he was nervous about the banquet, he said that he wasn't; he was just not looking forward to the ordeal of guest upon guest upon guest, hour upon hour upon hour. Very much like a duty. Like work.   The promotion has been like an evolution; the interview was not as a moment of reckoning but a green light at an intersection. Marriage will be the same in China - a signature on a piece of paper recognising what has been and will be. Onwards and upwards. Upane Kupane, as I haka'ed with an old colleague last Monday.

Stepping stones

The last seven days have captured a lot of the year: the sweetness of being together; the trickiness of living here; the ridiculousness of bureaucracy; the sheer endurance required just to keep one's head above water at work. It has had it all.   2011 in all may be a foundation year. It is of hard work, of learnt lessons, of persistence, of accrual (and not financially, let's save that till 2012). It was the consistency of the challenges that came that will make it memorable - and a brief look through the blog of the last year shows it: it was the year the bucked the trend increasing the number of blogs. I've thought a lot this year. Most of my thoughts never got close to being transcribed here.   One feeling that all trampers have is that of descending to the valley, down to the river. It could present a rapid descent, or sometimes the sound of the river teases you as you wind your way nearer and nearer. But then you get to the river-level, pass it in the way that you conjure, and then... It is (often) back up another steep incline, back into the trees and ascending to the next ridge. New years might be arbitrary markings in time, but they provide a reasonable landmark for us. A river between ridges to ascend. I like the significance of it. I like going from one phase to another.   Let's cross.

Stepping stones

The last seven days have captured a lot of the year: the sweetness of being together; the trickiness of living here; the ridiculousness of bureaucracy; the sheer endurance required just to keep one's head above water at work. It has had it all.   2011 in all may be a foundation year. It is of hard work, of learnt lessons, of persistence, of accrual (and not financially, let's save that till 2012). It was the consistency of the challenges that came that will make it memorable - and a brief look through the blog of the last year shows it: it was the year the bucked the trend increasing the number of blogs. I've thought a lot this year. Most of my thoughts never got close to being transcribed here.   One feeling that all trampers have is that of descending to the valley, down to the river. It could present a rapid descent, or sometimes the sound of the river teases you as you wind your way nearer and nearer. But then you get to the river-level, pass it in the way that you conjure, and then... It is (often) back up another steep incline, back into the trees and ascending to the next ridge. New years might be arbitrary markings in time, but they provide a reasonable landmark for us. A river between ridges to ascend. I like the significance of it. I like going from one phase to another.   Let's cross.

2 out of 2

"I've had a day here now: I've been approached by hawkers; eaten my first street food; smelt that funny "Please let that be anything other than sewage?" odour that wafts out of drains in the city; and been pushed in front of by little old ladies. Yes, if the sign after customs hadn't said it already, I'm indeed in China."   That was my first blog upon coming to China to work on November 15, 2009. I'd boarded my plane on the ominous day of Friday 13 November and the odd but now familiar time of 11:59pm, and landed on a cool, overcast day. The taxi driver that picked me up tried to talk me into teaching his son for 50 yuan an hour. Jetlagged and sleep deprived, I started to muse about teaching to help the less advantaged but remained wisely noncommital. Things have come a long way.   Two years have passed. I didn't celebrate it; someone else decided to randomly celebrate something else a day earlier and not wishing to detract from that randomness, I kept my own special day silent. Life also passed a stressful passage: the search for a new apartment. It ultimately ended in failure, we'll stay where we are but in some ways it cannot be regarded as a disappointment. It is only when you look at your other choices closely enough that you consider how lucky you are. Our apartment is wonderful (although a little far away), our rent comparatively cheap (we do want to save) and our landlord is fantastic (although too inclined to DIY repairs). Of course, it is when you re-sign your lease that the neighbours start renovating noisily from 8am every day. These walls make the scratching and hammering sound like they're in your room.   Work is attrition. Half the centres in my city are situation red, including my own. Our problems are two-fold: a historically struggling centre - students often don't come to class regularly or transfer out to the bigger centres; and it had been overstaffed to the eyeballs for most of the year and then shed almost all of its international staff... in fact, for a week in December and from early January, the international staff will be the boss and I. Staff deprivation unfortunately means that we cannot be picky about who we get, but students are. One of our soon to leave teachers is not appreciated by students by and large. He likes teaching but he doesn't have the skills to do it effectively or interestingly. He had got pressure from the boss to lift his game or face losing his job. He didn't like the pressure or the way his urgent need to improve was presented and resigned. When he leaves in early January, if no-one new comes, it'll be just the two of us. And then the students can have what they want: the two best teachers teaching continuously...   Part of my coming to the centre has been to help turn it around, not on the management side, but in terms of teaching quality, centre spirit, team spirit and innovation. I think the first three can still be delivered regardless of the red situation. It is great to be in the classroom and getting involved with students. But my plans for revitalising the centre academically (which have already been accepted by management) will be put on hold for at least two months. There is timing in these things. A season for holding steady, a winter perhaps, and a time to grow and get active: Let's hope I can spring in Spring!

In stride

If there is one thing that is true in my life, apart from work I can barely reasonably do one thing well at a time. Chinese has done well from me in the last two years (well, the reading classical novels and Cantonese parts at least). But these things rose and other fell away. One thing that did was my general fitness, and then my general health.   My trip back to New Zealand was a good reminder of this. The doctor said my immune system was low: that can be attributed back to diet and perhaps stress. Part of being a vegetarian in Guangzhou is the lack of variety that my body has become use to. And part of being away from the hills, valleys and mountains of my homeland is a lack of naturally occurring fitness. My fitness daily has been 15 minutes between home and subway twice a day and the stairs at work.   Part of being back has been to search for ways in which to make up for these. One concession has been to the expat way of eating. I've gone back to cereal and milk for breakfast and, with the luck of my new workplace, I've been enjoying falafel and humus and all the joys of a mixed diet.   My new workplace also has the novelty of inconvenience by subway yet the comparative convenience of food: at the quickest it'd take me 40 minutes to the office by choosing either bus or subway; by foot I can do the distance in an hour fifteen, which though not fast makes it a reasonable choice when I have time and leisure (and going home I often do). The temperature cooling, I can once again run without sweating myself parched. Ping pong and shuttlecock kicking becomes an easier option too (the latter best if there is no wind).   Our latest preoccupation has been whether to move. Our place though with inherent strengths has always been inconvenient. And two other dark marks against it: a poor sofa and a rotting cupboard under the sink. And it would of course be nice to save a few more pennies on rent. Yet there is no such thing as the perfect apartment. And the more one looks the more one is torn. If anything there is a temptation to spend even more. And with every place we look at it the better what we have looks.

A crisis of conscience and social trust

A mother distracted at her stall; her precocious two year old wanders onto the street outside; a van driver distracted runs her over with his front wheels and stops briefly; either not wanting to know what he hit, or perhaps fearing that he hit what he knew he hit, he continues running her over a second time with his back wheels; the CCTV records numerous passers-by having a glance some even stop or slow their vehicles; her mother has already realised she has disappeared but has headed up the street instead of down; another mother, walking hand-in-hand with her child, walks around the bleeding, crying, crushed little body on the road; another vehicle runs her over for a second time; an old lady, who spends her days pulling plastic bottles from rubbish bins for recycling, is the first and only person to do anything for her; she pulls her to the side of the road and gets people's attention; the mother finally comes over.   This is a what you could see uncensored on Chinese internet (TV clips of course are censored) of a very real event from earlier this week. It makes for brutal viewing - the first time I saw it I cried. It sent this country into a frenzy of blame and a gnashing of teeth about the sickness of the society. There are of course the two drivers who ran her over; they're in police custody. But the eighteen apparently normal people who didn't so much as call an ambulance on seeing a run over still living two year old infant boggle the mind. From the life of an outsider in China, it's the worst possible consequence of several factors which become increasingly apparent. This may have always been coming.   China is abound with the fear of all kinds. One of the fears is that of extortion. A pertinent example is the case of a good Samaritan who stopped to help a fallen elderly person. The elderly person was thankful at first but as soon as the authorities came suddenly changed their story to the good Samaritan having knocked them over and demanded they pay the medical costs. This is one of a huge range of "tricks" that exist in society. Most children from young are told to not pay attention let alone, consider believing, what they see and hear of people in need. Gangs do disfigure people so that they become better beggars. And there are those the prey on the basic goodness of people. Avoiding the bother that helping could entail is the consideration beyond the simple moral equation. We can ask how this justifies ignoring the cries of a mangled child whose life hangs in the balance, but it does if one considers that a mother could come out of the sideroad screaming to high-heaven that it was you who hurt her child, that if you don't pay up she'll go to the police and then even if you can prove it wasn't you, you've had terrible bother. It's an easier thing to just keep going.   Even the drivers' behaviour can be understood to an extent. In some small towns, drivers who hit people might be dragged out and beaten by family members (as some people can escape justice through their connections, villagers taking justice into their own hands is often common sense). This has been used to explain hit-and-run cases here. Drivers will often turn themselves in shortly after on their own terms straight to a police station, as is also the case here.   Every country has its outrages. Outrage is good. It would be a lack of outrage that would be truly evil. With outrage let's hope that it settles into introspection: those eighteen weren't deviantly amoral, insensate; they were just like all of those carrying outrage. Let's hope that those outraged notice and in themselves seek to change the way they react to the hurt and unfortunate.   It is interesting to know that the only one to do something was poor and uneducated, yet showed instinctive care. It took no moral courage to act. She was given money by the city representatives and gave it straight to the young child... who regrettably is likely to die soon or become a vegetable.

Autumn Floods

I walked home from the bus-stop barefoot on Thursday night. Many people did. It is not something I ever expected to do in suburban China, with its reputation for filthy streets, but there you go.   It'd started raining in the afternoon. It wasn't heavy but rarely let up. Rain of course isn't a rarity here. Even though the summer steam has eased, autumn is still rather tropical. Rain is a big problem for public transportation too, as the taxis become difficult to catch and people clog the dry subways. Rain snarls up the traffic so buses also come less and less often.I take buses in general these days, which is cheap and generally comfortable. My bus eventually came and pleasantly I got a seat in which to observe the outside happenings. The bus goes through and underpass, which was a foot deep with water at the time. The bus, like a charging elephant, ran through the river with a groan.   Guangzhou is a river city. The beautiful, yet stinky, Pearl river halves it. There are also numerous branches and canals through the suburbs (my apartment looks over one such branch). Though river cities flood when the water level rises, I've never seen this happen in Guangzhou. Guangzhou floods because Guangzhou can't drain. Guangzhou's extensive network of canals and streams should facilitate its draining but through civic mismanagement it doesn't. The humour from last year was that the city government put a lot of money into modernising its underground drains in one area only to flood worse than the old system ever did.   Anyway, so I was on the bus overlooking the aquatic mayhem. To be honest it didn't look that bad. I got off my bus and put up my umbrella and walked to the edge of a block, which was cut off by a decent bank of water. The sight of a passer-by, or should that be a wader-through, gave me enough to gauge it was close to knee height in places. I went to the other end of the block. Again: water, water everywhere. I was on an island! Looking closely at the people who had resigned themselves to standing under eaves and in shops and banks you could tell that they too had sensed no other option. There were no taxis to catch. Buses on this side of the road would take you farther away and possibly to even deeper, less familiar waters, and not many people have friends with cars to call over to pick them up. So suddenly one has to think how much damage a walk in the drink will damage one's shoes and tailored pants. Or how long it will take for the flooding to ease. (If the did wait they'd be disappointed: it rained well through the night and even heavier than you could ever imagine.)   Then came the answer to me: a gentleman came onto our island, plastic bag with his shoes and pants rolled up, walking calmly by with his umbrella. If the notoriously dirtophobic locals aren't scared of walking through floodwater barefoot, I'm certainly not. So off came the shoes, up-rolled by pants (although the material of my pants always made them slowly unroll, requiring re- and re-rolls) and I set off home. It was a good feeling. Guangzhou rain is fairly warm so it was a comfortable splash; the road surface nicely massaged the bottoms of my feet; and unlike New Zealand, and let this be known as one of the advantages of Chinese streets in general, there was no glass (which is fortunate because I'd hate to think what was in the water).

Children

So we were kicking around a shuttlecock in our apartment complex patio area when a voice came from behind us. It was a mother talking to her children about the game and presumptiously asking if they'd like to join us in the kicking. The two boys said they didn't but still walked around to a position that incidentally completed a triangle to observe us. Mid-play, the shuttlecock launched off the side of my foot in their direction and they leadfootedly let it drop down next to them without any attempt to kick it back into the air. "No-one got it!" I dramatically cried in Mandarin. Their mother from behind called out that they should join in when the oldest one stomped away yelling in English: "I'm from New Zealand!"   I had never expected him to say that! "I'm also from New Zealand!" I called back but he wasn't listening or wasn't interested.

Wind has turned

I was walking through the old town looking for something to eat. I bumped into three friends, all of whom were considerably older than me. We were on our way to somewhere, when we came across a blood donation facility. We went in. One of my friends muttered that he didn't want to donate but the others had already grabbed an application form. We'd mostly filled in the form when it became clear that there was a space to stamp a chop. We told the woman attending us that we didn't have a chop. She told us that we couldn't donate then. We were frustrated and were about to leave when I asked: next time, besides a chop, was there anything else we needed? "Anaesthetic." "Why do you need an anaesthetic? We don't use anaesthetic to donate blood in New Zealand." "Because it's painful. You need to get one of these," she showed me a bag of liquid that looked the same as saline solution. "Can I donate without anaesthetic?" My questioned trailed as she trailed away. She left the room never to answer my question again.   And that was roughly when I woke up. Chinese bureaucracy and service have obviously entered my dreams. It has become easier to dream, too, with the night temperatures dropping into the low twenties. The wind, as they say, has turned. It is cooler in the mornings and cooler in the evenings. Generally speaking it is a nice period to be outside and active. I went for a two hour suburban tramp this morning without the feeling of sweat running down my back. This is how mornings should be.

Zaraz Khan

I'm not quite a pacifist but have extremely mixed feelings no war. Especially when wars explode with an unwritten pretext. Being in China slightly takes away your scope of the lead up to events. China is after all a very inward looking country, even when it's staring outward. The first news about the Libyan war I remember was that the Chinese government was evacuating all 60,000 nationals from the country in a very short period of time. "Why are there so many Chinese there??" a student puzzled in Lounge Chat. It is a piece of the puzzle, the massive diplomatic and economic internationalisation of China, that most of China are unaware of. Economically China is extrememly international. And beside we all learn more about the world through America's wars, and even about ourselves.

 

Wars, though: The flags wave. Guns splitter. The media flickers. The anti-war people splutter. The rulers family are hunted. People's lives runs red in the streets. It's the devil's circus. A compelling one, at that. There is always one aspect of America's wars (and probably the war's of others, but allow me this indulgence) that was particularly offensive to me and it comes from great TV programme in China which finally gave me a name to get closer to linking it to the true inhumanity of it.

 

Zaraz Khan was a tall Afghani, he was famed in his small village for it. He walked out into the desert with two other gentlemen with him, purpose unknown. Does the fact that we don't know where he was going lessen what comes next? There is not much next because a missile from an unmanned Predator drone obliterated him and his companions. The people behind the obliteration of a completely innocent human were talking at ease. "Yeah, we spotted him with the drone. He was tall, and we knew Osama was tall. And he was dressed like Osama so we got the order to fire."  The obsenity of it is the manner in which people weigh up the lives of others. Zaraz died because he went for a walk, was tall and dressed like a devout muslim. But his killers showed no remorse. It is not hard to find other cases of unmanned (and probably manned) bombers too. Of course, apologists could say that the other side shows little distinction between those military and those civilian. It doesn't quite gel to me: you don't go to the level of your opponent; and the stronger power has the ability to be cleaner with their actions. This kind of slaughter justifies the 9/11 event. The scale in this particular example is different but the obscene result is the same: innocent, truly innocent people burning in the indiscriminate destructive forces of those wishing to kill.

Teaching Learning

Language, of all the things we can spend our time learning, is a peculiarity. Almost any thing you can learn about is easier to learn as you get older peaking in your twenties and then declining marginally ever on. We don't even try to teach finance to teenagers, maths to a toddler or philosophy to a tween. A language, however, is best learnt when we are young. There are many reasons for this: like walking, producing sound is a physiological process, a body skill; the brain is primed to learn language when we are young; and producing sentences is requires procedural memory, something more easily formed when young. Language is hardly a body of knowledge after all, but a body of skill. It is more akin to swimming than other subjects.

 

As we age the disabilities toward learning language accumulate: a tongue that doesn't naturally want to go between the teeth for the "th" sound; an inability to grasp the concept of tense; a reliance on translation from the mother tongue, and others. Experienced teachers often approach the realm of being a therapist to their students. Just like rehabilitating people who've lost the ability to walk, we have to nurture the desire to take those baby steps again, slowly and carefully, and provide the framework of poles so their muscles can again form to do the task. And that's why at our centre we have Dr English.

 

It was an idea adopted from another centre, but we quickly dressed it up better with signs, appointment times, and 10 minute slots. Being one of the doctors has been interesting as students who go to it have often struggled immensely with one aspect and have time to explain. I listen to their language, check their notebook, ask a few questions, diagnose and prescribe.

 

It is only now that I really have tapped into an area when I can contribute something groundbreaking. I didn't realise that I had such an advantage over almost all the other teachers in the school: I've been continually learning languages since I was 13. Most teachers in my school have never learnt a language successfully. Now, shall I preface this by saying that you can be a brilliant presenter and effective classroom language teacher without the experience of learning. But learning is a skill in itself, and language as mentioned is an almost unique field of knowledge to learn. To know how to advise people on how to learn, it is best that you've tried, failed and occasionally succeeded to distil great advice. You also need to have the realisations that your way of learning is suited to you, and what works for you may not work for others. And then you will have to build on this knowledge and use analogy to form advice for the others. That's where the over eighteen years of bumpy language learning come in.

 

I started with Japanese, which I approached wrongly, at high school. I used my academic brain to master its structures and memorise characters; the only thing I did right was to write down characters compulsively until the point that my hand had coordination to write characters smoothly. By the time I got to Japan, I was still mostly functionally unable to speak and listen although I had enough vocabulary to survive. My listening was terrible and I could only pick out some words and guess the meaning of the sentence. I then went onto Chinese at University which I started off on the same foot as Japanese but set myself better: I used language exchange at University; I had a long time in Taiwan to make me realise the heart of my mistake: I may be a very strong visual learner, but no matter how much I read and wrote, it would make no difference to how I spoke. This seems incredibly obvious but every student that I tell it to just like me has had the face of a recently enlightened Buddha when they hear it. In Taiwan, I wrote a 20 minute speech on a topic that burned deep within me (the treatment of trainees). Motivation and channelling interests into a language are of course crucial; yet most students are directed to BBC to topics that suit only the few interested in world affairs.

 

It was only when I returned from Taiwan that I started to read in Chinese for periods of time, and only then I discovered radio. It might seem strange that someone who is a visual learner might find the radio a learning tool. But that is one of the discoveries of my learning trajectory. You learn through your prime learning method and then review with the skills you are weaker at, without much assistance from your strongest suits. I tried it with Maori when I was learning it. I'm using it with Cantonese. It works. One method to learn; another method to generalise and consolidate the knowledge. In this world of subtitled movies, most students will use these together which obliterates the chances of nurturing your weakness; it only feeds your strength.

 

The difference in time and experience shows with my experience with Japanese. After coming back from Japan, and having had 5 years of high school Japanese under my belt and some misguided  self-study at University, I failed level 2 of the Japanese Proficiency test. 5 years later, a period in which I only went to Japan for a few days, had predominantly studied only Chinese, and went to one Japanese class a week for three months, I passed level 2 easily. The five years represented me finally realising what kind of learner I really was. It had taken twelve years of my language learning career: two thirds of the time! 12 years of inefficient unsuccessful, disheartening learning that had been eroding out of me every day. Other teachers at my school try to emphasise this to students: if you don't review, you are frittering away your money. But that's when it comes down to the key point: What is good review (for this particular person)? There is a concept for choosing learning strategies. It is called meta-cognition.

 

I went to the school lounge yesterday while I was heating my dinner and was beset by Betty, a great student who found she couldn't understand authentic English outside of the school. She could only understand with subtitles (English subtitles for English films). I asked her for her notebook, then gave it Jimmy who was looking on. I asked Jimmy to read from the most recent page: "Diseases are caused by germs." Betty's eyes lit up and said: "What's that? What's that?" I told her that if you want to review properly you will need someone else to read your notes to you and test you on the words that you have recently learnt. You learn listening by listening. And went back to get my dinner. I was starving. I hope she gets the idea and keeps it going. I'll ask her in a couple of days.

 

But if a small number of people have the quality advice and can only dispense it one person at a time it is incredibly slow. Dr English itself is a form of reincarnation of an old add-on service that "they killed off". When I started teaching here were what were called PAA, an acronym which I'm finding it more and more difficult to remember the meaning of. But in essence a student could book a whole hour with a teacher to ask for study advice. They could do it once every three months. As one of those who did them, I loved it. Students who knew about them loved it. (As with Dr English, the take-up rate was fairly low.) But there was a company idea to slowly move teachers to the chalkface where the money is made: classes which the money is linked to, and not the nice extras. Study advice was moved onto another department, the progress managers. (Chinese staff who are very proficient in English, who follow the progress of the students and check that they are studying at the right speed. They have lots of duties.) Over a year on, I've heard countless pleas from progress managers to give them help in giving study advice. My next step is to make an effective training for them to give quality specific study advice. But also give them a tool where advice can easily be shown on a powerpoint. Up to know, their advice is often challenged by intransigent students. It's time to give them the knowledge and authority to tell students how to improve.

Implosion, division and entropy

The process that began with the slow-motion firing of my ex-boss three months ago has led to a dramatic phase: complete reorganisation. Looking at ourselves this week perhaps the staff looks much the same to three months ago: next week two people effectively leave, the week after a new centre opens moving two people over and in that same week, too, another teacher departs. Compared to April, the school has effectively halved its staff, the schedule will be ripped to shreds and weekends splayed all over the place.

 

I have been a perceived loser in this process. For most of this time I've been seen as the odds-on senior teacher to go to the new centre, something that was seen as a developmental opportunity: I'd have been the main manager with a Director of Studies only in my school once a week. I'd have had the freedom to manage and organise staff as I would have wished. It would be the intermediary step to becoming a Director of Studies (one of my announced intentions of being in China – to get the experience to be an academic manager). It'd have been a challenge, to be clear. But it is not one that I've lost any sleep in losing. I need more time to get my style and ideas together. I even need more time to get my administration together and teaching consistent. This is my project after all. And teaching is going to be one of the main things I'll be doing over the next few weeks as a shortfall of teacher bites. But there is always a plan for us in this life.

 

I've been thinking more about those three who were leaving. One of them seems to be in some sort of strife now (something I'm not privy to), but when it gets down to it I still cannot really figure out how he led himself to this path. Of course, I really don't understand him well enough to speculate but I find myself doing so. Speculation is the son of Partial Ignorance and Curiosity. He seemed for a long time out of place, taking time to establish friendships, or perhaps needing time for his workmates to get used to his idiosyncrasies. Idiosyncratic is a good word for him. But nestled in his make-up as a person was an essential negativity or outward facing critique. A lot of the things he verbally has expressed frustration about have been the things that our old boss introduced, ironically where he has been persuaded to leave to.

 

There were several boiling critiques of particular policies and another department in meetings. There was an oblique suspicion of his drinking during working hours.  (It was an unconfronted issue, addressed indirectly to the whole staff – whether he was embarrassed about it, I don't know.) And there was one flashpoint involving me: I'd noticed that he was late for a Lounge Chat and there were students there waiting, and went over to remind him. He said he'd get to it in a minute. Minutes later he left the office and the building all together, not going to the Lounge Chat, to who knows where. Over lunch with my boss, I speculated that it might have been him reacting to being called out on it. It was about that but moreso that another workmate also appeared to be scheduled for it at the same time as him. It was a mistake on the schedule that I knew about already that day. He saw his workmate was just sitting there watching online TV not going to Lounge Chat and felt he was the being picked on. He hadn't spoken to his workmate to make arrangements to share the duty. He hadn't queried me for why I was speaking to just him. He just did the rather extreme action of leaving without a word and aggravated the situation. He resigned the next day. Yet we know that he didn't resign over this issue. One of the interesting things that my ex-boss taught me was that when someone has resigned or is about to resign yet is doubting themselves, they may subconsciously create a conflict situation that will consolidate their will to leave. Leaving with anger where one can clearly state to themselves and others why they're leaving helps one come to terms with such big decisions. His attitude was one of the reasons that he wasn't approached by management for some flexibility in departure times. He took the fact that he was the only one who wasn't approached to reconsider his resignation as indicating that we always wanted to get rid of him and expressed his feelings to other staff in and outside this department. The most irking thing for me really is that despite all this, thinking back through time, I can't think of any incident involving him apart from the minor. He has had a pretty decent time here from my outside view. I've had no incident with him either – I was disturbed that he'd leave the building over a perceived slight given that we had nothing but a clean past. Given time, he'd have progressed more as a teacher. Our school is pretty good at developing teachers. Or maybe it was just the city. An NZ colleague left the company early in his contract last year stating one of his reasons as Guangzhou itself…

 

I don't know if he'll regret any of this in time or have introspection on the point. He is still in his twenties, and perhaps that is an interesting range of ages to consider deeply from across the fence of thirty. Most teachers are either in their twenties or thirties and there are those common characteristics for each group. To manage a school you need to have a grasp of those different age groups and work subtly with their psyches to avoid these things coming up early.

 

The departures of the other two I'm quite sad about: a teacher I've helped mentor and a teacher who was widely seen as the most promising local teacher. I've enjoyed working with both, but I think it's unfortunate that they've chosen to be part of a simultaneous resignation. Does anyone want to be part of an evil plot to harm? Of course, it was expedient for my ex-boss (probably used as bargaining leverage) to get them to leave at the same time, but inflicts a rather savage blow to their former employer, and it's a blow that is not borne cleanly by those who my former boss would like it to hit.

 

Of course, the other side of them leaving was the option given by the other side. We can only imagine. My colleague thinks that a picture has been painted of what is possible over there. Our school doesn't offer part-time work. For people interested in travel and study (and that is a lot of us, including me if I weren't also interested in accumulating savings) there isn't an option; all three who left my ex-boss knew were interested more in those other areas than in career building. My boss thinks it was the birdy in the ear chirping how bad things were here and how over there it would be better. The birdy in this case is not my ex-boss but a disaffected teacher from the past, someone who general opinion has a very colourful view of.

 

Our company in this region is haemorrhaging people. Ours is not the only dismantling going on but I always think of ours as mundanely Shakespearean (well I was analogising to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, wasn't I, just a post or two before?) Either way, I hope the promises of the promised land aren't desert mirages for all three. I'm going to try and keep in touch. In crisis there is opportunity and in the haze of this sandstorm, I've been offered a parallel move to another centre. Let's see what comes of it.