Infectous Affection

Kids apparently love touch [even bad touch, re: a few posts ago].  They want to high five me, seemingly always after I have seen them with their fingers in their nose. They want to climb on me, poke me, rub their hands across my blond arm hair.  Those little snot factories just want to share their nose gold with me, via a system of trickle down snotonomics.  However, influenza has been making the rounds at schools, so my desire to be groped by children is at an all time low.

I taught kindergarten last week.  I made it through the entire lesson not being touched.  I kept fun times going while not so much as a graze of human contact.  Then, at the end, the teacher asked ‘touch?’  I can’t begin to explain the fear that went through me.  What did she want them to do?  All she said was ‘touch’?  What exactly does she mean by that?   A horror of being mobbed by tiny fingers and rubs must have made me shudder, wide eyed as a deer. They lined up and I stood awkwardly waiting.  Then, I realized, they would each get to high five me on the way back to their class.  Cool, I’m used to this routine.  Some of them lightly pat; some of them give the five all their tiny muscles can muster.  Granted, I’ve seen them picking their noses, hands in their mouths, scratching themselves, but I can sacrifice one hand to the god of child happiness, right?

This is completely normal: Kids like to high five.  I’ll just wash it off later.  I’m scot free on this class!  No weird touch! Then, the second from the last, stopped at my hand.  Slowly, she lifted her face up to my hand and lightly kissed it, lingering longer than ever necessary.  While I was taken aback by the mildly violative kiss, I was more horrified that she just kissed a hand that now housed all the germs of the class.  Right on my sweaty palm.  Poor child.  She bounded off with glee, pleased as her teachers smiled.

School daze…

The post all my friends have been waiting for:  elementary school adventures.  The moment people found out I was teaching elementary school – hilaried emails, jocular chats, and chuckled phone calls were my gifts.  Today, you get one story:

Between classes there is a 10 minute break in which children run while, chasing each other and playing games.  Often, this is unsupervised by any teacher.  Typically, I am ignored or greeting with fly-by ‘hellos.’  Today, I began to write on the board [every class begins with the date, day, and weather in English].  I feel a bump against my buttocks.  Not unusual, kids run into me all the time.  I feel it again with a definite smack feeling.  I peer over my shoulder to find a little child, complete with glasses, smacking my bottom.  I continue to look at him and he says something in Japanese.  I say, ‘What?’ To which he looks at me, shouts ‘OH MY GOD’ and smacks my bottom with the fervor of a fat man eating pie.  One final smack with a karate-like battle cry and the little one was off on a new adventure.

Oh…there is more to com, just you wait…

Return to the Mainland

Tomorrow, I’ll return to Mainland China for teaching.   I’ll be heading to Guangxi [in the southwest area of China].  I’ll be spending my time primarily in Baise, near the Yunnan Province, and Guilin, a city renowned for it’s beauty and scenery.   I’m excited to be returning to China.  I’ll have some blog updates and such when I return.

Awkward

Today, one of my Hong Kong friends and work companions asked an ETA peer a question about a word.  She turned immediately and said, ‘Bryan, explain what fellatio is...’

Yes.  Fellatio.  I cannot begin to describe the number of times really awkward words arrive from super nice, well meaning, and completely naive Hong Kong girls.  I’ve been asked to explain horny, boner,  and words unfit for print.  Now, I’m foul and lewd.  I know it.  I’ve said things that make hardened criminals curl their lips, that burn the ears and race to the bottom of acceptable utterances.   I’m with Frank Zappa on censorship.   But nothing on this planet will make me blush faster than the look of horror and shock when you explain what it is to them.  The clasp of the mouth, their hair whipping in front of their face as they turn away or shirk backward, and the gasp or giggle.

Even when they are not awkward, how do you explain what a ‘crush’ is to someone who has no word for it in their language?  How about flirting?  They all come down to this word, love or affection, which they then lump together despite their nuances and subtleties and leaves them with a confused definition that doesn’t help.  So many words seem to come into this territory  – the territory of shades and colors – that my attempts to explain them is met with my own confusion and bewilderment.  Give me a grammar problem any day… 

When you lose a language…

A topic that often comes up in my curriculum and pedagogy courses is Medium of Instruction. Prior to the 1997 handover, English was the favored language of education [EMI] in primary and secondary schools.    After the handover, a mess occurred.  Some schools switched to teaching in Chinese [CMI] while a few kept English.  Regardless of the problems of language learning this created, it quickly resulted in EMI schools rising to the top of rankings and desire of parents – particularly because the universities of Hong Kong [namely HKU] teach in English.  English was, and often still is, viewed as the language to success in Hong Kong.  But with the ever growing influence of Mainland China in the world, a newfound identity, and a desire to restore ties with the Mainland, Putongua [Mandarin] has also become a medium of instruction in some primary schools.  So, EMI & PMI & CMI…students could potientially recieve their education through three different languages.   

Well, “three” different languages in a way.  Cantonese and Putongua have an odd relationship.  Cantonese speakers always seem down on the language.    I’ve heard officials from the government say Cantonese is only a dialect.  When I tell them I am learning they just say, “Oh…learn Mandarin.”  They say that Cantonese has no writing, despite the fact when I teach and use a Cantonese dictionary to help Putongua speakers build vocabulary they shake their head and say, “um..that’s Cantonese.”  Regardless of my feelings about the categorization of Cantonese as language or whatnot, this story gets a little more interesting.

Based on the student’s responses on this day, I posed a question: What if Hong Kong schools stopped using Cantonese as a medium of instruction?  What if Hong Kong officials decided to only teach in PMI and EMI?  Their answer baffled me.  They would be perfectly fine with it, whatever needs to be done so that their kids can make money.  I asked if they saw any problem with this – if it might be a problem if their kids or grandkids didn’t know Cantonese?  Aside from problems communicating with them, no problem at all.  In the end, only one student said that she thought it would be a little sad if the Cantonese language died out.

Having taught in areas where languages are dying and people are desparately trying to preserve their cultures against an ever encroaching world, this really struck me.  I found myself defending Cantonese in the class.  I’ve never been in a place where a group of people said their native language wasn’t important.  I know that this isn’t probably the feeling of the majority of Hong Kongers, but an entire class decided it would be ok to lose their language if it meant securing economic prosperity.  Even after writing this, I’m still flabergasted.  It just makes me sad.

Luzhou [Teaching Pics]

Luzhou [Sichuan]

Ever wanted to be a rock star? Let me tell you now – it isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. For exactly 7 days, I and my ETA companions were de facto celebrities in Luzhou, Sichuan. Taller, bearded and rosy cheeked [in a town that you can count the number of Westerners on your fingers and toes] – stares were the norm, pictures were expected, and talking was a must.

I feel like I could write 10 posts on various reflections, thoughts, experiences, and interesting stories about my time in Luzhou. Even then, you wouldn’t have a full picture of what I saw and shared. Frustrating, eye-opening, interesting, humbling, and exciting are words that just scratch the surface of my time there. So, I’ll give just a brief overview of what I did and some funny moments.

Luzhou is a small city in China. By small, it has 1 million people. Yeah, you read that right. China has attempted to totally redefine small town, village, and rural for me. In a lot of ways, Luzhou was like Tai Po. Open markets, greenery, rivers, and high rise buildings. More interesting though, was the huge disparity in the area. The average yearly cost of living on campus was less than 1000 RMB [about 200 US]. In the town, I ate at a totally plush hot pot restaurant where everyone got their own individual pot to regulate what they put in and the spice. The bill was easily 800 RMB – for one meal. Rich and poor seem butted right up against each other in this developing and burgeoning city. But, back to teaching and students.

For the week, I was expected, along with my companions, to present, visit classes and local people, and to give students and English experience. The class visits were great. I have rarely seen students so genuinely fascinated. We introduced ourselves and then spent about 30 minutes rotating between groups of students, showing pictures and answering questions. I brought some US and HK money, which really many of the students had never seen. I was asked the same questions about a million times:

1. Do you like China?
2. Do you like Chinese food?
3. Do you like Chinese girls?
4. Do you have a girlfriend?
5. Can you use chopsticks?

They asked a lot more questions, but those were musts for everyone to ask – even if I had just answered it. After this, we would take pictures. Read that line as – insanity ensued.

At one point, I stood smiling as I faced 15 cameras and phones. I had no idea where to look nor who was grabbing my arm smiling ear to ear next to me. That unknown would scuttle off to the camera, and another would grab my arm. Girls and boys crammed to get into pictures with yours truly. Of course, in our mini group – the Asian ETAs deftly slipped out the door – leaving me [the only male white ETA] and a companion [a tall blond] to be devoured by the masses. To say I was mobbed is an understatement. At one point, an arm shot through the crowd, pulling me out – and it was our Hong Kong leader saving me saying they could take more pictures later. This happened every class we visited.

English corner, where we stood and spoke to students who showed up, had the same problem. As masses crowded around me, inching closer and closer, I worried I might be crushed as more people tried to get closer and closer to me. Once one became brave enough to ask if they could have a picture, madness followed.

Overall, it was great though. My voice started to go and I was exhausted, but it was really interesting. An ETA and I spoke to each other wondering what impact this visit would have on these students lives. Would they at some point, fifty years from now, be sitting with a fellow student and reminisce about the Americans who came to visit? Would this be a blip and otherwise meaningless?

I’m not sure but I will definitely remember that I do not want to be famous.  Next post – teaching pics.

New vocabulary…

Last week was full of proofreading papers, as many students here have papers due during the same sessions. In addition to some simply odd language choices (ex. “we need to create a puddle of knowledge-based manpower”), occasionally the students pulled a new word that I have never seen (or a word I have rarely seen) in my 26 years of English. Often, these are the result of blind reliance on translator dictionaries or by accidental mistype (spelling the word closely to the intended one) and a digital spellchecker giving them the gem.

Among my favorites:

Mammonism – Devotion to the pursuit of riches.

Abecedarian – 1. Of or pertaining to the alphabet; marked with the alphabet; arranged in alphabetical order, as abecedarian psalms, like the 119th.2. Occupied in learning the alphabet, or pertaining to one so occupied.3. One engaged in teaching the alphabet and merest rudiments of instruction.

To Mug up – 1. intr. To read or study in a concentrated manner. Now freq. with up (on a subject, book, etc.); also formerly with away at, on at.

Often, they are misused and unintended – but they always remind me of the richness of English and the large vocabulary that we rarely use on a daily basis.  While I was in Bulgaria,  this occured fairly frequently.  Once a friend gave me directions to an art museum saying, “Turn by the palace of justice,” which simply made me chuckle because Americans would never describe a ‘courthouse’ as a ‘palace.’  Another time, when I asked why she had no pictures hanging on the walls, said ‘It is forbidden.’  The thought of checking out a new apartment and asking the landlord about placing things on the wall and s/he booming ‘it is FORBIDDEN!’ still makes me smile!