“没有天然的对错，只有必然的因果”

I might have mentioned that one of my chief sources of Cantonese learning is a radio programme that is a talk-back lifeline. It has been nourishing me lingually for almost a year now. I stumbled on it while listening to the radio (on my cellphone), headphones plugged in, walking back from my regular late night suppers. Once I realised that my foundation was good enough to pick up words and ideas from just exposure to Cantonese I quickly started listening to channels I randomly found. Some frequencies were more to my ears' pleasure, and particularly the drama of talkback on Ziu Gwonggwan Sangming Yitsin （赵广军生命热线). The stories were twisted and quaint. The hosts could be patient and clear; they could be sharp and devastating. Each call in, each text message read out was a little tale of mystery to my nascent Cantonese listening sklls. At first I was catching the general theme and thieving particular repeated words that I'd check at home. Soon my listening vocabulary covered a huge range of themes from family, love, life to career.

 

It is through repetition that language is learnt and the stories through life are often thematic and similar at their hearts. But ironically it was the most repetitive of language that was the hardest to crack. The programme as it begins and restarts from breaks had a recording with a man saying clearly several sentences with background music. These isolated wise sentences were some of the hardest for me to grasp. They were stripped of context and words that I had often learnt already in Mandarin in passing but were not familiar enough for me to guess. Others were of a deeper meaning so that even though I might have the language knowledge to know every single word, I wouldn't necessary think it was likely because it might seem meaningless unless I trusted my listening to take it one more step of thought.

 

One of the more fascinating was the phrase in the title of this blog, "mut yau tin'yin dik deui'cho, ziyau bityin dik yan'gwo" ("There is no inherent right and wrong, just inevitable (cause and) effect.") I might translate the last bit to "inevitable consequences". It apparently comes from a poem, or that's what I thought I heard when someone called in to ask. It is a very interesting aphorism and maybe a good reflection of the philosophy of the programme. There are no inherent right and wrong, is a phrase that would make a lot of people argue. But that is missing its true strength. Whenever we are in a dispute or trouble, we see more sharply the rights and wrongs of others and sometimes even ourselves. Seeing that the weight of error ways (more) heavily on others often causes others to abdicate responsibility. He did it! And with so many calls you hear exactly that: parents are unfair; husband is abusive; the boss is biased; my son doesn't listen to me. So how can I change them to see that they're doing wrong? In fact when others have done us wrong, we can feel like we need to get our pound of flesh, because it needs to be extracted, right?

 

But that's when the second half of the phrase kicks in, all actions when applied to situations will cause changes that will either be adverse or beneficial, or perhaps even neutral. If we are going to enable someone to do something to improve the situation, it often pays to take the right and the wrong out of the consideration and see where different actions will take us. What actions we can take. What can you do? Bothering to list the rights and wrongs (especially when it is from one side of the story, which is the only one you have access to) hardly will give anyone any more than sympathy. But what do we really want? "So why are you calling in?" or "What do you want to achieve?" is usually a question ten minutes into a call.

 

I'm quite proud of my listening now. I can listen and enjoy the stories. Sometimes I can understand smoothly enough to not realise that it was Cantonese that I was listening to (which is peculiar but a good peculiar). This though is the result of what is crucial to a learner, to understand how they learn. Listening was the sustenance to my Mandarin for the long time that I was in New Zealand without Chinese classes. Japanese radio online was what got me to pass the Japanese test I did in 2005. And now armed with an iPod (thanks, Brenda), archived radio programmes, and live broadcast I can have an hour's worth of exposure. And with my teaching skills I know how best to use this exposure to generate real improvements to listening skill.

The Unconsidered Life

I might arrogantly propose that my local chinese swimming pool could be taken as a microcosm of many aspects of Chinese society. It is a fifty by twenty metre pool with lanes painted on the bottom but no lane dividers on the surface. People swim both lengthwise and widthwise, standing splashing at all areas of the pool. Crashing and weaving. There are signs not to dive and jump into the water but the sound of bombs, dives and near misses (screams) prevails. Life guards watch from their platforms but only to blow the whistle when the pool needs its lunch break. Then it rains and people, for some reason, run out of the pool and to shelter...

 

The key themes are that words whether spoken or clearly written don't matter as much as what is being done. Even with a clear design of how things should work, people will find a way to subvert it, not with malice but with apparent laziness, or just a bizarre can-do attitude (it can be done so why not). People don't seem to consider their actions in non-set situations. (E.g. standing on the escalator they will think about everything except about how they are standing on the escalator and how their position affects others.) And even obvious supervision is not for the purposes you think they are there for. But anything unexpected can elicit the most unusual primal responses.

 

The general la-di-da-ness of your average swimmer here is depressing. They really don't seem to check where they're jumping, swimming and who might be coming from where. In the subway, people seem to treat getting to the scarce but hardly comfortable seats a matter of utmost urgency, worth preventing disembarking passenger getting out, worth pushing the elderly and women carrying babies. Apparently Guangzhou isn't the worst city in this regard but it is still a travesty.

 

I'm not sure which of the hoi polloi Socrates was musing when he pondered that the unconsidered life wasn't worth living. Was it just one that was considered for its Grand Purpose, or merely the correctness of their actions like I might like to regard it now? Probably both. Of course the relativist in the corner of my brain (he's often locked in his room) may cautiously aver that everyone has someone who looks at their lives as unconsidered.

 

All of this thinking while I attempt, in a wish though not a death wish, to swim a length of backstroke might lead you to think I've mastered the art of swimming while meditating on the universe. Regrettably this isn't the case. Getting back into swimming has been a relief as I've lacked a regular fitness habit but it is a recent thing for me. Swimming is perfect, and at 12 yuan (NZ$2.40) it is pretty cheap even though at peak time you'd be lucky to survive. And so close, barely 5 minutes away from home. Swimming in a hot climate is something I haven't had the pleasure of much prior to the recent months. The water is now at a constant air temperature close to 30 degrees, which allows entry without any shock at all. The "cold" shower after the swim is a pleasure. In fact, I might swim just for the freshness of the shower at the end. Swimming hasn't yet returned to the ease it had prior to my initial departure in late 2009 but that is just a matter of time.

 

The sooner I swim off this belly the better.

 

Sound and vision

The city management swooped in, in a matter that could only be coordinated. Two vans shot up next to the roadside and proceeded to take away tables and chairs from the pavement in front of the restaurant we were eating at. The owners and service staff swarmed out onto the street to occupy the ground. Apparently it was not theirs to take. People talked in strong words. The owner struggled to retrieve his plastic chairs from their confiscation. Cameras were always out on the city management side, quickly recording the proceedings, whether to protect themselves later, or for recording identities, who knows. And where were we, sitting at a table that should really have been confiscated too if there were to be any consistency, but we sat there at the tables while the others were take away. One colleague got up in tautoko of the establishment that we regularly ate. The rest of us watched the scene.

"You can't do this, we're Chinese!"

"You aren't Chinese!" such petty name calling. I was off to the bus.

 

"Blue, Blue, that's the colour of my room, where we will live…"

And the Guangzhou tower glowed red as the bus proceeded home. I had my iPod on giving a tune to the world I observed. The bus was a new thing for me in commuting. I had been loyal to the subway but now it seemed that bus could easily beat the subway. This was something paradoxical: apparently the small transitions in the subway system: from home to station, from station to platform, wait for the train, get out of the train for first line swap, wait for train, board and get off train, cross platform, and board again, get to the station and emerge once more; all of these transitions though seemingly short make it a very long journey, while the bus takes all the changes and swaps out and make a simple long journey. The tortoise wins this race.

 

"Well, honestly, I don't remember who you are…"

The iPod moved on and I've got off the bus. It was already after ten-thirty but there was a daylights worth of people on the street. Why would the shops shut? I guess no-one looks for real estate at this time. I go into a dairy for a Pokari Sweat. There is a cat on the counter. Miao! I pat it. Miao! I pay for my drink. Miao! I pat it again! Miao! it comments with a big mouth. I head out again. The night sight of people is always a worthy scene in China. I pass a small supermarket. The shifu is still working directing people to the good fruit. He's "solid" as my colleague would have called him. The shifu is the kind of person who'll tell you that there is no fruit ripe enough and to come back another day. We've eaten two durians over the last two weeks and he was right about all of them.

 

I got home earlier than expected and gladly so; it'd only be then that I'd blog.

Swings and round-abouts

We're on the verge of Dragon Boat festival and have entered the teeth of summer. It is pumping hot. Hot in the morning; even hotter in the day; and steamy in the evening. I've done better than last year in the simple act of keeping hydrated. Pokari Sweat (an isotonic drink) and pineapple beer (a local product, quite nice, but would kill for a Phoenix Ginger Beer) are staple drinks, I drink them on more days than I don't. I'm fine but don't ask me next week. At least I've discovered a swimming pool in the neighbourhood which is surprisingly cheap and surprisingly big.

Work has been waist-deep and though still fascinating, it is more than one can do in a forty hour week. I'm doing overtime, but I'm hoping that will end next week when the new boss takes the Continuous Professional Development off my list of things to do. The new boss is an American probably about the same age as me. He has had experience leading teams and centres, and is approaching the task earnestly. He gives me another point of reference as I create my own way of managing. He's revived policies that haven't been seen before for a while (an English-only environment in the office) as well as some quite original ideas that can only be from someone who hasn't been in this environment for long.

China is about to swell with national pride as one of a billion did what none of the others, or their predecessors, had done: won a major tennis tournament. Li Na is a sensation here. China will long have an instinctive craziness as it breaks through ceilings and goes into fields it hasn't achieved in. Let's see if it is the exception or the breaking of the rule forever onwards.

So this is the aftermath...

You might, from previous blogs, think that my mind has been completely immersed in work. And to be honest, work has been the number one priority for me in a way that it has never been before. It is an absolute necessity now, for a period, to think through every facet, get everything as right as I can and try to manage the things that don't go as right as they could.

 

My boss has been neutralised by the company, but not fired. He can't tell us exactly what he was given to keep his voluble mouth quiet, but he had at one point been asked by the company what it would take to persuade him to "resign". He made a list. He was probably given most of that list. He wouldn't have expected that. The company hasn't had a good record on dealing with staff on their way out. He said it was a complicated negotiation and it took place at a cafe. The result is that he is leaving in just over two weeks. We have to wring all the distilled management wisdom out of him till then.

 

One other factor is that my senior teacher buddy is leaving for several weeks to finish the practical side of her advanced teaching certification on the coming Friday. I might not have explained it before but that being the biggest branch in our city (and with a new centre opening soon) we were entitled to have two senior teachers instead of the regulation one. It meant that we have had an academic management team of three, my boss and the two of us. We could put our heads together to produce plans and nut out strategies. Each of us covering key responsibilities. Come June, I'll be the only one at the bridge for several weeks, with no support but the team in my hands. The boss has even told me that his last week he's going to step back even further to put me in the deep end but with him as a lifeguard at the fringes if things get life-threatening. Either way, with the imminence of the change I'm focussing like never before.

 

The last few weeks have been a process of gradually switching to the leadership figure. If I had to write what I had learnt, it is a little bit difficult. Many of them are knacks. Others are concepts.

• you are not the company: this is an interesting one because it went against the sense I understood. With customers you are the company and must reflect that. As a leader, though, you must have a set of priorities of who you really have to consider: The team, the branch, and then the company. They are all high priorities, but the team ranking at number one means that it'll be a functional, strong, motivated group of individuals. When the team is strong even when they are dealt a load of crap by the company, they will take it and get through adversity together. If a manager takes a "I'm the company" approach with staff, quickly the see there is no recourse to them in adversity; there won't be trust. As a company where teachers become managers more often than not, we are forever troubled by managers who will just be messengers of the company, and they'll be one-way valves for information. Staff need to know that their voices and ideas are heard, even if they do in the end amount to nothing. And as my boss often says, his team are his eyes and ears - if they trust, they do say everything.
• leave the details to one on one discussions: this is the most common mistake by the other senior teacher. Meetings are ruined when you have to tell individuals details information verbally. a) the people affected won't necessarily "get" it, b) and the rest of the staff are left wondering how useless meetings are.
• visual, kinaesthetic and auditory learners are in the office too: teaching is a funny field because we're taught about the different learning styles (and you can even put Gardner's intelligences on that too) and have to make our lessons as accessible to different learners as possible. But anyone who's been through teacher training knows that there is no practice what you preach - it is delivered in the same traditional style. The quality of training and meetings are affected by these different styles so a manager must use a variety of styles.
• for trouble staff, make behavior as felt and answerable to the team, not management; and if it continues give them a rope to hang themselves: the area of discipline is one that regrettably has to be handled delicately. My boss has taught us how to make sure that documentation is just a statement of something happening. They can word it how they want as long as it is documented and signed. Don't intervene before the mistake, and where possible emphasise that wilfull bad behavior impacts the team, to the team - in fact make sure that the whole effects of the team are borne by all. Letting something happen was one of the hardest lessons; but only when it happens is it real and something to discuss with the person.
• praise, check on people and encourage and follow documentation: praise and documentation is a part of recognition and in difficult situations people do need to be checked on. Three teachers got slammed yesterday by their own workloads when we had to cover a sick person's classes on a tight day. One teacher did six contact hours, one of which was observed by me, in an eight hour period. He thanked me at the end even though in the past teachers have been upset when they have sick cover, not to mention on a day they're being observed. Many of the appraisal descriptors relate to willingness/enthusiasm to help out and these can all be noted.
• everything is important: It is easy to downplay concerns, but to an individual what may appear minor is actually a major. You need big ears and a good memory...
• get your hands dirty and make sure your seen to be doing so: senior teachers are in a horrid position because with negligible teaching hours at times, and many of the outcomes of our work not easy to see, it can cause some resentment if one is not seen to be doing something.  

 And even when that is all done, things can still go wrong. Well, I've still got a lot to learn...

The dirtiness

"Are you telling me that floors don't get dirty in New Zealand?"

It's a good question, of course. But I think I still emphatically say that Chinese floors accumulate dust faster than any other surface known to man, woman or cockroach. As a barefooter in the house, I can accurately measure dust accumulation from a morning of wandering around the day after we've mopped the floor. Today, a seemingly reasonable floor browned the soles of my feet in barely minutes. Where does it come from? The doors are shut overnight yet by morning there is dust again. Where does it all come from, I ask?

 

Of course, I'm not that much of a clean freak when it gets down to it, but there are other sorts of hygiene that are tragically lacking in China in ethical and business practices. With the benefit of not having my name mentioned here and no company brand to be tainted, I can dare open my mouth. In the blog age, we shan't mouth off about our employers for the risk of dismissal etc. if we do. And I can attest that no potential students would have the patience to get through my content. (Even capable high-level former students on mine in New Zealand told me they struggle with the sheer content of expressive writing.) And besides they'd need software to get past the Great Firewall to see this blog. And I'd still steer potential teachers to my company anyway because it is very good for professional development.

 

My company is a western company in China. We're told from the start that it works via western rules but the more you stay the longer you see that it is more of a fusion of approaches. Some might cynically say it selectively chooses which approach benefits the company, especially its finances but also its management. I could talk about that general topic, but I'm more interested in the dirt right now, and especially practices that would be illegal or unethical in other countries. It is depressing to keep it all in. I'll work my way from minor to major, and along the way describe what to avoid in management. I should also add a little note: The evils I'll talk about aren't specifically relating to Chinese business nor am I claiming they don't exist in the West. They shouldn't happen anywhere except where they are allowed to flourish.

 

Many jobs are dictated by a fancy acronym, KPI, or Key Performance Indicator. This is intended to be an objective numerical measure of your performance. Of course, it is hard to quantify performance and so a set of KPIs might be needed to evaluate it. In an ideal world, these would be unfudgeable and would be decided by those in an objective position. Regrettably, this is not the case here. My boss's boss's pay is determined strongly by one KPI. This is one related to the number of classes and how many students are in there. Unluckily for me, the scheduling of classes falls into the ambit of my job, to schedule classes at the right time so that they are mostly filled. Because the boss of my boss's boss wants to look good, they set the target very high; the pressure is high because its a big part of his pay but the ability to add (fictitious) classes is completely at the hands of us at the lowest levels. In terms of our academic team, it was a compromise we had to make and there was no recourse to complain. Several levels up the chain are all happy about this cheating because a high number reflects well on them. There is with all likelihood complicity quite high up the level. In China, there is a poor man's version of the prisoner's dilemma. There is no virtue to honesty nor any benefit whatsoever. So no team can meet the targets without cheating. So many targets cannot be left to doubt. Of course, you get into all sorts of irony. We get told to cancel classes because of a lack of demand... yet the classes are "full". One week I taught lots of classes without ever entering the classroom...

 

My boss is about to be fired. It is a salutory story, which I won't attempt to explain in its entirety here. But he is one that has tried to make an issue out of following procedure and standards. The latest idea the company had made him quite irate, and in a way that neither I nor my fellow senior teacher could understand at first. Now we know: They introduced an appraisal system that would be linked to pay. They described each level of performance with descriptors like: "The teacher prepares his class in an appropriate way = 1. The teacher prepares his class appropriately considering potential contingencies etc." The staff member being assessed will assess themselves and then will meet the centre director and academic manager to discuss their evaluation of him. Then the combined assessment will be sent to the the area academic manager for a sign off and a monetisation of their performance, their bonus for the next year. My colleague and I thought this was an improvement on what we had, great teachers will be rewarded. My boss, however, explained how it was an unacceptable system. First of all, the descriptor is flawed. "Appropriate" is insufficient for anyone to give an objective evaluation, and so it becomes opinion. If a staff member challenges the assessment, the manager can just say that they weren't appropriate enough. In practice, an appraisal system must have concrete criteria. He illustrated it well in a directors meeting where he gave our dress code to everyone and then the standards in the new appraisal system for dress and asked everyone to assess their colleagues as if they were perfoming the appraisal. Not surprisingly, on a scale of 3, some people's scored varied from 0 to 2, demonstrating that the existing criteria would be too subjective and staff in some centres would be advantaged by lenient grading leading to "nice" centres and "mean" centres. I gave myself a zero because the standard for a 1 was to follow all the requirements in the work manual, one of which was to wear a tie. I don't. Others ignored that aspect and went for a nice mark of 2.

 

There were other issues raised (it was going nationwide of course so the area manager in the room was never going to do anything), but the one objection he raised that makes this slip from incompetence in system design to dirtiness was a specific problem my boss never broached in that meeting but later over a meal in a restaurant with us. The performance appraisal is not just verified by the area manager and ticked off. Internationally, managers just need to tick off the objectively observable strengths and weaknesses, and the area manager should agree because there is no room for doubt. But because there can't be too much excellence in the school (which would cause budgets for bonuses to be exceeded) the area manager needs to be a gatekeeper to knock scores down. Who goes up and who goes down? Opinion, again. What does each appraisal score equate to in terms of a bonus? Completely at the discretion of the area manager. Our top performing teacher stepped on the area manager's toes a few months earlier and despite what would have been a complimentary appraisal of his performance, his performance bonus was barely above the lowest possible rise. A moderately performing colleague got more than him. The system is not only biased to favoritism, it is open to use to punish those who have gone against the upper management. It becomes a tool. But nevermind, talking about salaries is a fireable offence, so punished staff member will never know, will they? And thus we get to the crux of my outgoing bosses argument: there is no reason to improve these things because with the vagueness comes their utility. An objective system cannot be a tool, but they need it to be a tool. It sounds almost dictatorial and, shall we say, communist.

 

This brings us back to the western company in China situation, and perhaps exposing what is just human nature. In Christianity and even the secular values of western nations, there is a belief that humans need to be reformed with systems. With the developing nature of the Chinese economy there haven't been the struggles yet that created strong institutions and managing principles that have taken a long time to establish in western nations. Playing with numbers and using your opinion when only reason should suffice is very human, not specifically Chinese, and we can only look to those who established the system here for their lack of nous. And the later is probably one of my central theses from my experience so far. Don't expect teachers to be able to do the jobs of managers unless you train them. The worst of human nature will come out when a system is poorly designed.

 

My bosses imminent departure was never going to be good for me. He has been something of a mentor, and still we learn daily from him, but at least I've managed to step up a lot in the last month. I've had many achievements - I stopped the area manager in her tracks with a brilliant presentation (saving my boss from a sooner dismissal, he was planning an all-out assault) and also designing a more effective way of presenting notices. He may go next week, next month or if they are patient, August. I still have a lot I'd like to learn - he is a goldmine of experience. But all the same I should also try to go it alone without the back-up he provides by simply being in the room. He believes by going, in the long term, the school might become a cleaner place.

 

I'm not so sure.

Lethal Vegetarian

I've conspired in the death of another rat on the office floor. This one was more of a struggle and required the coordination of three people for five minutes to corner and then kill the poor blighter. He and another had fallen from the ceiling and after a brief scurry around the computer lab had bolted into our office from where he'd never return.  For three minutes of the pursuit a service manager (not our staff) stoutly stayed in the corner on what would presumably be a very important call. Her bravery was shattered when it dashed to her corner crawled up her leg and into her jacket. One staff member was in tears and she hadn't even been in the office when it came in. Another felt uncomfortable just being in the office again.

 

If my boss had been on duty, he might have led us all out. I didn't feel brave enough or qualified enough to do that without some ground laid with the centre manager. He reacted quickly coming to work and getting an exterminator for the next day.

A spoonful of sugar

One aspect of Chinese culture I'd always steered well clear of is the medicine, and even their theory of looking at nutrition. It never appealed but with standard health services pretty bureaucratic and unhelpful (I'd love to have my GP here), I decided to take the chance and go to a community Chinese doctor.

 

His doctor's office was a waiting room and pharmacy of the herbal sort. Inside random patients would sit and wait their turn to sit with the doctor, who'd often converse with them while conducting examinations. His examinations were simple: take their pulse on both wrists and talk about your symptoms. Then he writes in glorious longhand your prescription and doses and sends it across the table to his apprentice. She then puts liberal amounts of sticks and leaves on some cardboard, and funnels them into standard red plastic bags for you to brew in your medicine pot in the comfort of your own home.

 

In a special pot you put each dose of the medicine into a pot and add four bowls of water, then boil it down till there is just one bowl of liquid left, usually some shade between brown and black. I've had two different prescriptions, the second outdoing the first for sheer disgust factor. It is the kind of thing you hope you can down before your retch reflex knows what it hit it and passed it by. I'm far from loving it, and far from seeing an effect but time will tell. For your information, the diagnosis was that my blood is toxic, which apparently isn't as bad as it sounds...

Coffee vent!

Deep in the ocean, amongst the coral and coelacanths, is a subterranean volcano set to erupt. Beneath it brews fire and steam, bursting through a coffee bean substratum, building pressure beneath the ground. One day this sea will be infused tan; one day we'll all wake to something other than the oceanspray.

 

No! That's not a coffee vent, this is:

 

China may never be renown for coffee. It is sometimes disconcerting how bad it can be sometimes. My sister and I once scoured a whole city to find a single cup of barely drinkable beverage that goes by the same name. That was a second tier city, though. I live in a supercity (of the sort that Auckland will never be). There is coffee, but still Starbucks is regarded highly. Occasionally one may come across a good cup but it remains an exception. Just a week ago I moaned to a friend that there really aren't any decent cafes here.

 

But then I went to Xiamen. Xiamen is one of the most important cities in Fujian province, just up the coast from Guangdong province and just opposite Taiwan province, that mysterious province that lies beyond the mists of the People's Republic of China's authority. Xiamen itself is a pleasant place but its jewel is an islet by the name of Gulang Yu. Crossing in a ferry, you find the cutest cafes on almost every corner, and many of them are redolent with well ground beans. The coffee itself is decent. In one cafe I had one of the best macchiatos I'd ever had. (A real macchiato and not the sickly sweet caramel thing that calls itself it that at Starbucks, and a cafe close to work.) The cafes themselves have the boutique kind of quirkiness, which this critic found quite delightful. Many of them specialise in a regional sweets or tea (which the province is definitely famous for) which makes the experience even better.

 

So I drink my frothy words: There are cafes here, and they are good.

 

(But, of course I could easily speak so delighfully about the tea on my trip.)

Vermin

We share the world with an abundance of other animals, whales, plankton, albatrosses and aardvarks. There are more bacteria biomass than that of all vertebrates. In NZ this abundance of life is most noticeable by birdlife and roadkill possums. In China our shared world is mostly evident by the little invaders, cockroaches and rats.

 

Cockroaches are not a daily thing. They might not even be a weekly thing in the apartment but when they're there it is horrible. Huge ugly things that can critter at a rapid click. They can fly when motivated. I used to not be able to bring myself to crush them with a slipper but usually give them something more painful, like spraying them with Mr Muscle. Now it is all on. Even the littlest one will be splattered mercilessly. I feel so barbaric.

 

Today probably raised the level of brute force to another level. It is important to know that most buildings have an ongoing rat problem. Both schools I've been in have had them in and out of the offices, sometimes they sound like they're playing bullrush in the ceiling. I used to be oblivious to it until someone pointed out the sound and now every time I hear it my ears prick. Mouse excrement is sometimes around the place but that surprisingly has not been as bad as actually meeting the guests (or are they the hosts?) when they fossick in our world. At my other school, I came back into the office to see one deposit gifts on the senior teacher's desk before looking over at me and bolting down a cord hole. And just to make you glad for the joys of hygiene, there was a day a few weeks back that the air conditioned air smelt of... urine, presumably theirs but who can be sure.

 

Recently in my new office I saw a mouse cross desks in broad daylight before going down the cord hole on my computer. I moved back quickly and it took only a fraction of a second for the office girls to read that reaction to know that it was time to stand on chairs again. Tonight, tonight, tonight, ohhhhhhh, I was sitting at my desk in the office when I heard a sound to see a rat (a rat rat, not a cute mouse) walk into our office. Pursuit was engaged. I, at one stage, had my leg kicking along a window sill to deter it. Rats are sneaky though and he dropped down to the ground and scurried out the office. Students saw it. Potential clients saw it. Fortunately for all concerned it didn't know the floor plan and ran into a dead end. It hid below cabinets before bolting out and straight under my nimble foot. Such a move cannot be done with delicacy, so when it was apparent that it's tail wasn't moving, it was obvious that I had taken him out.

 

I'm pretty OK about all these critters, to be honest, but it's sad that there can't be a way for them to be a rarity. How is it that NZ has so few? A few colleagues raise legitimate concerns. Such places are unhealthy. There is a very small chance that we'll all contract the plague. There is a distinct possibility that some of our sick days are the direct result of rats and mice. The school fortunately is not waiting for the building management to act any more and is doing its own thing. Thank goodness is all we can say.

 

The Shaky Isles

It is a week since Christchurch shook its fatal shake. Not being in NZ as something so big happens is hard. I wanted to know everything: The Herald with its videos were my breakfast. By the time I'd got on the metro, I was reading it in the Chinese media: Chinese too died in the quake. The day after it was front page news for that reason. A picture of a father watching forlornly at the TV broadcasts. His daughter, a Guangzhou native, was in the quake, she was trapped in a fallen building but had managed to text him saying she was struggling; she texted again for him to take care of himself and then her messages fell silent. She almost certainly perished. The news of the quake reverberated around the school. A large number of students could raise the name of the CTV building, which is a temporary tomb for a large number of the victims. A language school inside made it even more relevant and poignant. That tragedy made the comment that this was not just New Zealand's disaster all the more apt.

 

Though I'm far away from home, the inundation of news about it became a compulsion. I sometimes hear people repeating the sentiment that it is sick to be so interested in the images of disater. But there is something very human about this. It is rooted in many emotions: sympathy, grief, astonishment, curiosity and fear. Disasters are when again the veil of routine life is pulled violently from before our eyes and brutal realities strike us again. One cannot appreciate normality until they accept the true normalness of this tragic event.

 

The scale of it is hard to really interpret. Any shock happening or development can be hard to really grasp, and only with time can we really know. The Erebus disaster (which occurred during my lifetime) will likely still stand as New Zealand's worst disaster. But its impact on the New Zealand, beyond the lives lost, was mainly psychological. The Napier earthquake at number two can only be imagined. 256 lives disappeared in 1931 in that tremor. It is almost frightening to think that in that in what was a small town, everyone must have known people who died. With 80 years to accept the tragedy it is remembered for the positive effect of Art Deco rebuilding and land for an airport. Beyond the immediate carnage and death, one can only think about the fear after the quake. One clip was taken at Christchurch airport where people were fleeing the city. People were vowing that they would never return. But there is no place of earth where the earthquakes didn't stop shaking. Let's hope that this last series is the last and the true rebuilding can begin.

 

In Guangzhou the spring festival feeling has gone and the spring weather has come. About the time of the quake, the Guangzhou temperature became warmer than Auckland for the first time in the year. It is a world away in feeling, and creates almost a contradiction in my head.

 

Words and letters (2): You say tomato; I say tomato.

I usually spend my days switching roles between a self-studying student, to a teacher, and then occasionally a student with a teacher. One interesting recent experience has been a new role: language researcher. Just up the road (75 minutes by bus) over to the neighboring city of Qingyuan is a realm slightly removed from from my Guangzhou Cantonese world, a world of distorted sounds and fascinating words. Qingyuan dialect is a close relative of Guangzhou Cantonese and for me, an elementary learner of Cantonese, the twists and turns of it were enough to leave me dizzy when I first heard it in September last year. I've just come back from my second time in Qingyuan and this time it was for nine days. Every day was a step deeper into a language for which there was no reference but the speakers themselves. Every day there were little discoveries which speak a lot about languages in general and that is what I feel most moved to write about.

 

The language is always strongest in the older generation. Generalising and innovation might come from the youth but their parents and grandparents have the most authentic and unique speech. This also makes the learner's job a challenge. I can remember when my students in New Zealand used to complain about them not understanding their elderly host parents. The shoe was firmly on the other foot when the rapid speaking extended family in Qingyuan spoke to me. What little language I had got me through in a basic way but some people were completely beyond me. But they are the storehouse of a language. As soon as I realised some of the rules they were the easiest to spot them again and again. The elderly present another problem which fortunately for a language learner is a blessing. Accuracy is a requirement - they don't understand you either unless you use the correct tone and pronunciation. Children and younger people can guess your meaning even if you say pronounce something crudely. The older the person the more feedback you get to improve your speech.

 

A conversation after three days on my second visit:

"Why does he always start his sentence with that word 'gui'?"

"That means 'he'"

I was gobsmacked. I had had conversations with them on the preceding days but hadn't noticed that I was missing one very fundamental word. What's more I only found out on the second to last day that the same word can be used as a determiner "that". This I hope illuminates how much one does feel around in the dark. (Or how blunt my brain is.) It is deciphering and matching patterns. You can't even ask a native speaker to tell you the differences between their own dialect and another (in this case Guangzhou cantonese). You own language is not strange to you and you don't spend your days thinking of these things. As for "gui" (he), I probably misunderstood a lot of sentences about myself!

 

"What is syu-gee?"

"See-gei (Guangzhou Cantonese for "driver"). But that might only be in our three villages."

Three villages? Well, actually I've found out it is more than that but the shocking point remains that a whole variant of language can exist in a fairly small number of people. It is only because most English speakers live in colonies that have a generalised English (with accents but without dialects) that we don't notice this. Countries where the languages originate have the widest varieties of the language. England itself is a case in point with a lot of regional variance. And conversely New Zealand, too, proves the opposite. We have an indigenous English with our own vowels, our own phrases and idioms and grammar unique to our area, in a population of only four million that has been around as an English dominated state for 171 years.

 

See-gei in one place and syu-gee in another place just a stone's throw away seems astonishing. This is an element of language known as a vowel shift. Many sounds in Guangzhou pronounced "see" are pronounced in Qingyuan as "syu"; many sounds with -ei endings here are pronounced as "ee" here. English went through its own series of vowel shifts that are shown by the words that are spelt as if they should rhyme, but don't; or that aren't spelt like they should rhyme but do (e.g. love and grove; meat and meet). Grasping different vowel shifts was crucial to understanding and being understood. There is also a massive vowel merger in Qingyuan dialect too where three different sounds in Guangzhou cantonese are now just one in Qingyuan dialect. In New Zealand English we may have a merger underway. Many young people will have some trouble grouping the following sets of words into rhyming groups: here, hair, hare, hear, peer (n), pear, pare, peer (v), dare, deer, dear.

 

There are plenty of unique words and usages which escape any "rule" too. Language is not physics and language will always form its own idiom, which brings us back to that fruity vegetable, the humble tomato. There is something about its fleshy delicious texture that makes people want to name it in different ways. Taiwan mandarin says something completely different to PRC mandarin (xihongshi and fanqie respectively). And now while discussing cooking I find that Qingyuan has its own way of naming it, different to Guangzhou just down the motorway. Sometimes the lack of a rule is a rule itself.

 

The trip, if taken solely as a language investigation, was a great success. I can talk to both adults and children in two variants of Cantonese about simple topics. Cantonese is still just a push bike to the race-car of Mandarin (or the bullet train of English). But I have a bike. I can ride. And there are some interesting places I can go with it.

 

The speed of a censor

On the work computer I watched the following video (article and video uploaded on 2:15pm UK, Thursday January 27, 2011) on the work computer:

 

(if you are a little big squeamish don't watch)

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/China-Year-Of-The-Rabbit-Cartoon-With-Political-Satire-Overtones-Censored-By-Authorities/Article/201101415913138?lpos=World_News_First_Strange_News__Article_Teaser_Region__0

 

The next day from home, again, I could still see it. It will be a nice objective measure for the speed of a censor to a foreign media site. I'll try until the time I leave. I didn't expect to be able to see it today but that perhaps shows how big the job of monitoring the internet is!

 

 

 

Life is movement

Seasons change in nature and seasons change the people. It is the turn of winter now where the oddly named Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, erupts. It triggers off what some people call the greatest human migration on Earth, which incidentally happens on a yearly basis, increasing in scale with every change of the calendar.

 

The official Chinese New Year travel mania period begins 15 days before Chinese New Year and lasts about 40 days according to Wikipedia and is most easily observed in the prosperous cities which attract labour from other provinces. Guangzhou is exactly one of those cities. It has such a large proportion of its population with a hukou (their household registration) outside of the city that every day leading up to the actual festival (the coming Wednesday, by the way) and this is the population that leaves to return to their hometowns. It causes the subway system to be clogged with people carrying excessive bagging (usually camped at the doors of the train to obstruct people getting in and out), speaking in a variety of unintelligible dialects and, without wanting to be too mean about it, usually having the least cultivation or politeness.

 

For a school it is a hollowing out experience as the students become sparser and schedules become leaner. Some teachers are left with one class of substance for one nine hour day (including lunch break). From this weekend, teachers (including me) will be leaving for their vacations meaning those left behind might be the only ones "holding the fort" in the office, alone. The office's lack of heating becomes more apparent. If there is one good thing this year, it doesn't seem as cold but maybe that is just a different house at at different time and a different set of clothes. I'll have over ten consecutive days off (for the cost of three days of annual leave) and god I feel like I need a break!

 

Lessons

It is one of those transformative aspects of writing, whether it be for blogs or books, that as you write your idea is crystallised, you yourself are persuaded, and deepened is your knowledge of self and subject. This is even truer when writing is done over time. Could your view be changed as you write? The intended conclusion is somehow reversed or dramatically altered during the organisation of one's thoughts? And over time, with the turbulence of experience, could you have hardly honestly even continue on a topic?

I will seek to write this in one go in the hope it holds my view back of the week. The week under inspection really did begin on the Saturday past and I write on the Saturday of the present. It'll start with the mundane details, forgive me, of a regrettably common part of my job, an incident report:

Kelly (name changed) breezed into work at 11:08am. She was due in at 10:30am to begin her iLab helping at 11:40am, a scheduled activity that involves helping students in the computer lab. It was an hour that staff often take as their office hour, but my boss was very serious about changing this bad habit and we were generally cracking down on tardiness, so, to be consistent, I invited her to a small meeting to fill in an incident report. I'd done these routinely in my time at the school, always in a low-key way with the person concerned and always explaining that it wasn't disciplinary, but a way of improving a situation.

During the meeting, of which I can remember fairly little of the exact words but most of the substance, I explained the situation and she explained her dilemma: she lived far away and relied on a shuttle bus that worked on a half hourly schedule; she could either come 40 minutes early or 10 minutes late. I said it was good to have it in writing (i.e. the report) so I could see if the management has any solutions. She had had an incident report (never with me) before and she seemed familiar with the drill.

The next morning a sales staff member approached me asking for Kelly.  She was booked for a 10:40am placement test with a student. It was 10:35am and she hadn't arrived yet in the office. I felt it was important to know that she was going to be able to do it on time or else I'd try to get some cover for her so I called her mobile to see when she would be in the office. She picked up, I greeted her then asked about the time she'd be in.

She answered: "You can write up an incident report, I don't care."

"It's not about that. There is a student waiting and I need to know when you'll be arriving."

"Whatever. Write an incident report!" she said and hung up on me.

I was taken aback for a moment before I saw her come into the office at 10:38am and did the test. I was irked because I felt I was only doing my job and so wrote an unCC:ed e-mail clarifying that I was only inquiring about her arrival time, had never raised the idea of writing any report and would appreciate it if she minded her tone. She wrote back and said that I should mind my tone and at that point I was just confused and left it there. I thought I might explain the incident later to the management team in case I had missed something.

As I left that night though, an e-mail went to my manager; it was a forwarded copy of my previous e-mail with my sentence "Please mind your tone," font enlarged and put in red. She said that I showed no respect for her, treated her like a child and she couldn't bear working with me anymore.

Fortunately I had a nice day off and recovered from a cold oblivious to it all until the morning before work I checked my e-mail to see there was the e-mail from my boss replying her and CC:ing me and my co-Senior Teacher saying that we'd have a management meeting called "Managing your team" to address the problem. He'd already met with her in a meeting where she had cried about the series of events.

I'll halt the narrative here because taken alone, as fair as I can be, it looks like a disaster. What did I do wrong? What advice would you give me and what way forth should I take?

The meeting was great, even if hard because it was all due to the mess I had somehow made. Fortunately my boss is great, something that I was going to elaborate on in the blog that began before this episode. We discussed the practicalities of the job, breaking my case into the steps and exposing ways to improve. We agreed on a consistent approach. Both of my colleagues had experienced something similar to the above in the past. My senior teacher colleague had it much worse, if only because her manager at the time was not as adept as our present one to know how to heal the rift. The key thing is that despite only what we recognised as one misstep (calling before she was late) and an error of judgement (following up the call with a personal e-mail), the event was not a discrete event but the culmination of an invisible antagonism.

I met with Kelly later and apologised for making her feel like a child and hurting her feelings. What came then was a surprising but enlightening outpouring. She'd been continuously irritated by me in ways I was unaware of. She went further to see that many people were annoyed by it. She listed the in detail and I asked for as much as she could give me. If I enumerated them here, you might think many of them petty, and most if I were defensive I could easily explain them away as me just being me. I said that I was new to the job, I was learning and was didn't intend anyone to feel oppressed. We shook hands at the ends with a smile and that was the end. Well, I can't say that can I. How many more inconspicuous barbs in my personality will come out in the future?

My new starting point is with that raw material she gave me. My role has changed and part of that will require me changing with it. My manner has to be one that people can work with and I need to reflect on the very way I interact on a daily basis. This has been quite invigorating.

That was just one story from the week, but the theme continued in some ways. It was first of the three big professional lessons of the week. (I'll speak only of the first for fear this will be too lengthy as a blog.)  But maybe I should reverse this blog back to where my thoughts were prior to all the excitement. That was, my boss is a great manager; and his boss is a disaster.

One of the biggest reasons for the differences between them is one that will blight this school now and limit it in the future. It is simply that great teachers are moving out of the classroom and into the manager's seat, without any succession plan or training. Few can transition easily. Few are naturally talented leaders. I'm used to managing a classroom not a staffroom. I rightly need training because my personable nature and teaching skills won't stop me from running a school into the ground.

My manager, in addition to a teaching career, has worked in Exxon Mobil as a manager. He has managed before and received training in it. His model for both of us Senior Teachers is to prepare us for succession. Much of his job he isn't meant to show but he does because "if I were to get hit by a bus, who would know where anything is?" He is highly critical of the lack of succession planning and training. In a word, we're lucky to have him.

At my last school there was a fallen dragon. He was the first local (i.e. Chinese) Director of Studies in Guangzhou. He was succeeding from a high flying Director who had received a more pivotal position elsewhere. He was promised support but received none. His school failed as he couldn't manage the team, contend with a powerful (apparently, corrupt) central operations manager and then was humiliated by the regional director of the time. He was given a haven at my previous school, not a step down to senior teacher, but plunge to being an ordinary teacher. The humility of the man is that he doesn't show any of that pain and is a dedicated passionate teacher.

It is a salutary story. It could have been me. I could be me: There is a chance I'll be the sole manager at a new branch school shortly. How much I learn in the next few weeks will be crucial to my success if given the chance.

 

Forge

The two western festivals of Christmas and New Year came to this city with the commercial hustle and subway bustle expected. And as those two bumped by a cold sopping blanket also descended: winter. The semi in semi-tropical reflects the fact there is a winter here, one that last a couple of months. But with a house that is now a home, it can be warm and cosy, in atmosphere if not of physical actuality.

Learning a language is a constant reminder that the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. I've felt like I've had a few breakthroughs on several fronts. Without direct study, I'm assimilatiing Cantonese more naturally than any other language I've learnt. But that is not saying much: I'm poor at assimilating language. I generally need to see language on paper, broken down into pieces and reformed. While I still have the desire for my new language to be served on a plate, I have felt more able to take language naturally in.

 

And for its big brother, Mandarin, I'm slowly but surely overcoming one of my big failings with it: tone combinations. The tonal nature of both languages is a significant part of my learning. It is the third dimension of the spoken language. Mandarin has five tones counting its neutral tone; Cantonese has six if we don't include three that some include. That might sound hard enough, but there is more texture to it than that. Some tones have more stress than others (a fact I only learnt with my superteacher last year). I knew way back in Taiwan that sometimes a second tone followed by a first tone was a huge difficulty, I couldn't say them correctly together. This is true for so many words including the country name Taiwan. I'd tend to change a second to a third tone when it was followed by a first. My throat couldn't cope with the change without my larynx collapsing in frustration, and when my teachers of the past had tried to help me with it, after five minutes my will and composure would collapse with it. Usually I just got the giggles. I'm rarely caught on that one anymore, which is pleasing. Now next on the list is a third followed by a second. And slowly but surely this to is becoming less of a problem. My teacher told me yesterday that there weren't any real problems, just slips.

 

The festival of the Chinese year, Spring festival will descend in less than a month and I'll be again on site to report from the cultural core: the family home. Last time I got to spend it with my friend's family and was immersed in it. For another Chinese new year my Cantonese will be proven and tested.

 

The Mountain ahead

(I believed I'd sent this three weeks ago but apparently sent it to a non-functioning address. Sorry for the delay!)

 

I came back to New Zealand as a visitor for the first time. Loose plans became firm. The food I had been denied for so long was now in huge supply at Countdown. As with my previous return from a long stay in 2000, the same things dawned on me: New Zealand is a great place; the air truly is sweeter; and …. Another thing that struck me is that I still don't really have a best friend in China , someone to chat about the nitty-gritty of life with. The absences of my life in China were more apparent in New Zealand .

 

And New Zealand blessed me with a rather brilliant run of weather, sending areas into drought. I could tramp in ideal conditions, swim at the beach twice and drive without any meteorological oddities. Going back, there was a seamless transition between the weather in Auckland last Friday, Hong Kong on Saturday and Guangzhou , as if the weather gods had decided to smooth the way.

 

New Zealand had barely changed. As I walked up Mt Eden road the sight almost merged with the memory of walking there before I left. A few restaurants had changed hands; cafes renamed; but it would be a fairly difficult game to "Find ten differences". The biggest and most pleasant change was the roading. The Taupo bypass has been completed; the Hobsonville bypass is half-done; the work on the airport motorway seems nearly finished; and the diabolical Manukau on/off ramps are now in fiendish form, sending me off in wrong directions twice.

 

Guangzhou, likewise, had changed about the same amount in the month I had been away. My return to the People's Republic featured one of the more extraordinary aspects of China 's information control system and one of my more inadvertently stupid acts. On the way to New Zealand , I wanted to buy a certain book which is banned in the People's Republic but available in Hong Kong . I couldn't find it then but on the way back into China I spotted it in an airport bookstore, Page One, and seized it (for the not cheap price of HK$150, NZ$30). I read the first chapter in Hong Kong while waiting for the train and then put it in one of my three items of baggage. On the train I didn't touch it, reading other books. Once I had disembarked I went through customs and then had my bags scanned by one of those big machines I assumed could only pick up knives, guns, bombs and organic matter. They came out the other end but as I picked up my bags, an official gestured at me from behind a desk.. I went over and he grabbed the exact bag carrying the book and without hesitation grabbed the Page One bag which contained it. He pulled the book out and flicked through the pages. "Can you speak Chinese?" he asked. I answered in the affirmative. (In retrospect, this could be either a curious question for a foreigner carrying a Chinese book, or a more probing question intended to find who I was bringing it for.) He asked and looked at my passport. He just looked at me with an almost-grin and said: "You can't bring this book into China ." I clarified with him innocently and he shook his head. He gave back my passport to me before taking the book away to the side. I stood there for a moment and I waited for a moment thinking that he hadn't told me to go, but moments later with a slightly humored wave he sent me along to the next step.

 

I was quite unsettled and astonished but then technology must be serving the surveillance society well. There may have been something in the book (perhaps a requirement for China to the Hong Kong publishers) to make the book detectable; or perhaps it is even more high-tech and can sense the book cover; or perhaps every book has a detectable set of dimensions and any book matching any of several banned books would be pulled up. Either way, I was happy to just have the book confiscated and nothing more (I think). It boggles the mind and is a salutary warning: I'd carried a certain banned book around China on my first trip. It is not something that will be possible again.

 

And so I'm full circle, back to where I was a year ago, seizing an apartment in November for the year ahead. My objectives are so much more clearer and potential outcomes all the more tangible and in reach. It is certainly an interesting time to be me.

 

Watershed 盛筵必散

The day passed, but I was only tired. The banquet finished, and all the people departed. I am no longer a teacher at my old centre, but from today a senior teacher in a new school. Emotionally, there is little feeling of loss yet. I was smiling whenever I told my students, often upset, about my imminent departure. Platitudes flowed and downcast faces were the gauntlet I walked, out the door and onto sidewalk. Will I miss them when I'm greeted without that adoration nor the same veneration in my new school?

The teacher-student bond is a special one; but only when you realise that a teacher is not a mere instructor. A teacher packages learning into every interaction: both academic and beyond. An instructor follows a plan and delivers "lessons". And I think I'm increasingly more able to be a teacher, but only perhaps because I can teach and model how one should be a student. Being a student is not a passive or receptive role, and to see it as any other is a mistake. To see being a teacher as being a solid agent of change is a mistake too: every case is unique and requires you to adapt to the new condition; the human condition is not one that can be taught with any one approach. And that the most important teaching often doesn't happen in the classroom, but rather when sitting down with the student to go deeper into their specific needs and issues.

As I exited I had a few slips of paper to give my contact to a few, a very few. Vic didn't, though he wanted to keep touch – I might contact him indirectly and I know that I can. Oscar wanted it, but I thought I'd give it to her later. Emil got it; he was a Filipino, a very serious student of high level and though sullen, possibly recently divorced, was most emotional when learning English. Rainbow would have given a kidney for it, seriously, and even said that I was the best teacher she'd ever had, seriously apparently ; but didn't get it. Tea got it but you could get more sincere than Tea. I found numerous ways to avoid giving any contact details to the highly emotional Ling; she'd be too much. Question Kevin got it despite being a nuisance at the best of times; he got it on virtue of his sheer desire to learn. And so for some it may be the last time they see me while others, virtue of my reasons or my whim, may keep contact.

And if I go back just over ten days, I can remember the question: "Would you like to end here on the 24^th?" I answered in the affirmative, and realised later that would mean about 10 days before I leave, only 8 days of which were in the office, three of which were dominated by mentoring three teachers, one of which was swallowed by meetings; another was taken up with a referral event, and what was left were a load of lessons and a lot of garden-variety tiredness. At least my desk is clear.

Tomorrow though I will enter the door at my new centre, make myself a cup of coffee as a senior teacher, shake some hands and get down to preparing a Travel Club lesson.

 

The sound and sight of silence 此地无银三百两

"The Japanese foreign minister begins to outline how they'd be negotiating with China over the sovereignty of a disputed island when-"

 

PICTURE OF THE FAREWELLING PINE ON THE YELLOW MOUNTAIN

 

A stock standard Hong Kong advertisement appears suddenly on Chinese TV: It's a cantonese advertisement educating the populus about the Hong Kong education system, which is a silly choice since it is not a part of the life of virtually any of the mainland citizenry.

 

The normal service of the morning news program resumes: "And the bullet fired into the Chinese embassy in Japan is being investigated. It is believed to be a threat relating to the incident which inflamed the whole situation when the Japanese navy arrested a Chinese captain for sailing near the isla-"

 

PICTURE OF THE FAREWELLING PINE ON THE YELLOW MOUNTAIN

 

Another stock standard advertisement appears. This one is a nicer one: A rather pretty, exuberant lady charges around picturesque Hong Kong scenes swearing her love upon the mountains and the sea, "We'll be together for a life, for an era!" Who is she declaring to? Her teeth! Great concept. The ad also ends prematurely as the ad is cut before we learn how to preserve the relationship with our teeth till death you shan't part when again normal service resumes again:

 

(A map showing the position of the island): "And on this map the island still carries its original Chinese name."

 

Such is the quality of a news broadcast on a channel broadcast from Hong Kong into Mainland China. It is one of my favourite channels with the best presenters and the best content. It is permitted freedom to broadcast what it likes but the feed into China is censored as above. The picture of the farewelling pine (on a finer day than the picture above) could be symbolic of the freedoms long since farewelled (actually in mainland China if I think of a longer time frame of history, I'm wondering if there were ever an era that had any absolute freedom of information and media preceding the current powers). I remember first hearing about this pine when I arrived in post-SARS China in 2003/2004 and bumped into some ex-pat teachers who were travelling. They recounted the stories of the pine when they were trying to find out anything about the worrying spread of the disease.

 

I'm not sure what that does to a local viewer psychologically. In my current events class the topic of the island does come up and most (as usual) will say what the powers that be would expect them to say. I watch it and think that if I were a chinese person I would suspect that "what isn't shown" on a channel unbound by ideology must be something rather devastating to that perspective, and probably doubt it.

 

Students here are fairly free with their views. You'll hear views against the government quite freely and complaints about certain policies. But on some issues, often points of patriotism or national pride, most people will toe the line. And perhaps there is no voices of skepticism heard.

 

How to Navigate Chinese Streets

After my 11 months of Chinese life, I have learnt many of the basic skills of moving from place to place in China and wish to share them with my treasured readers.

 

1. Don't look where you're going.

 

Consideration will drive you mad here. In New Zealand, people have a luxury in considering giving space to others, yielding the footpath to others. But increase the number of people and the calculations of consideration suddenly become complicated. Chinese pedestrians generally don't pay attention into whom they're about to be walking. They'll have an absorbing conversation with their friends as they stroll not looking forward at all. It is like that sure-fire way of winning that classic car game, Chicken: unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. If you show that you are not changing course (and can't), whoever is the most aware will be the one to change course. If you are not going to change course you won't need to. Both people and traffic moves like a river here, with swirling eddies, white water, torrents and all. Of course people will bump into others which brings us to the next guideline.

 

2. Don't worry, be apathetic now!

 

Zen parable: You're in a boat in a lake relaxing when suddenly you notice a person cruising a boat towards you causing you to jump up and take evasive action. How would you react to them? Now imagine the same situation except an unmanned boat. How would you react? The point of the parable is that often we react to unintentional and incidental accidents differently. It is true in NZ. If someone were walking down the footpath with an umbrella (though under shelter) moving it side to side, spiking people with the prongs, others would curse them. But if a tree moved side to side and spiked them with its branches they'd be less upset and get over it quickly. In China though, regardless if it is the most inconsiderate pedestrian behaviour or reckless driving, most others will treat it as completely incidental, an unmanned boat, and most certainly nothing to get upset about.

 

I wish it were about Zen enlightenment. It is actually about a very low expectation of how other people will consider others. Road rage is left for actual accidents and not near misses. There isn't enough energy for the latter.

 

3. Cars give way to people; people give way to bicycles; and bicycles give way to cars

 

Nuff said. People don't mind potentially ending their lives walking in front of cars but be careful of the bicycles. They move like lightning and they know they have the right of way. Get out! I've almost been nailed by bicycles twice. I was walking straight. It was them who gave me the dirty look.

 

4. There's always room...

 

Subways and buses actually can fit a million people, if they are willing. Elevators are the same. Don't worry if the elevator just beeped overweight and the doors aren't shutting and haven't shut for a minute: the people waiting will wait and at some stage the elevator will descend.

 

5. ...and once you're on, you shall stop.

 

You were at the front of the queue of about fifty and proudly got onto the subway carriage with only two people sneaking in front of you. Stop in the doorway. This is important as if you go too deeply into the carriage, you'll have some pushing to do to get off. I know what you're going to say: What about the forty-eight people behind you? Well, if they want on they'll either push you further in or move around you. Either way, that is their choice.

 

6. Speed and urgency is all about scarcity.

 

Give a random set of Guangzhou citizens the simple task of going from A to B on a footpath, they'd take all the time in the world in far from straight lines.  Give the same set a subway station to get from A to B and the whole thing becomes about competition. Get onto the train! Don't queue. Push! Get a seat! Suddenly old ladies put their heads down. Parents send their children ahead ducking and weaving to get ahead of people so they can follow.  According to a friend, this is drilled in by parents and grandparents from a young age. In the most populous country if you yield to one you yield to all. And then you come last.