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The Fast State Nine Number Six

2010-06-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

An unexpected perk came to me the other weekend as I was whiling away my days here in China with the opiates of World of Warcraft and aimless philosophizing. This perk came by way of Jackson, who being on infinitely more intimate terms with the locals than I, had been offered a job of sorts by the owner of a local bar. Jackson didn't want this job, for reasons that I forget but possibly had to do with the 'details' as provided by the bar owner: it was far away from Xuchang, would take two days and a night, and that it was very important for a white person to come. These being the terms Jackson outlined to me as he looked for a replacement in order to do right by his friend, I knew that I couldn't say no to such a mysterious and likely inconvenient offer. Although I was quite enjoying my totally apathetic days, opportunities like this are frankly my raison d'etre for being in China at all, and my growing laziness was overthrown. I was signed up immediately, and I made a point to clarify as few details as possible for fear of talking myself out of it.
This journey, which it turned out was to the northern neighboring province of Hebei (Beijing's province), took about four hours during which I had the pleasure of being seated in the back of a sedan between two largish Chinese men who had clearly enjoyed several Chinese hot dogs for breakfast, and must have somehow surreptitiously continued to enjoy them throughout trip as accounted by the persistently fresh nature of the odor. The man who sat to the left of me was the heavier of the two and was clearly somewhat well-off as he owned a GPS unit that was occasionally consulted unsuccessfully. I know this, because the man had the unwavering belief that if the unit was in some way failing his expectations, he would shake it vigorously as if it were an Etch-a-sketch, which was often.
Arriving at Hebei, I inadvertently learned that the purpose of our trip was to sell herbicides and other chemicals to local farmers at a meeting the next morning using our hotel's large dining room. After being told this, I was let free to wander the city of Handan, which I quite enjoyed up until I made the (obvious in retrospect) mistake of filming some blowing sand. Currently my camera is still being cleaned out, and hope is maintained that it will be fixed before I leave on my trip. That night, though, meaning ten o'clock as everyone prepared for bed, I was told that I was to give a speech the next morning. I was then shown two pages of speech written entirely in Chinese. When I told them that I could not actually read Chinese fluently, they were briefly concerned, but then I was told not to worry because nobody in the audience (and they themselves, in reality) could understand any English. The plan developed that I was to give a speech in English, and one of the fellows I had ridden up there with would 'translate' what I was saying by reading the company-provided speech. This was fine with me, and became even more so after a short attempt to discover the actual nature of the Chinese speech (I was apparently a farmer from America, and I loved their herbicides very much, also my mother used them) and decided to give a speech that solely entertained myself. After all, if the audience wasn't going to understand what I was saying, they were going to be paying attention to how I was saying it, and so I had better be saying it with passion. With conviction! Luckily for the herbicidal company, and especially luckily for the audience of farmers that day, I have always had a fondness for (and a tendency towards) inflammatory religious rhetoric. What follows is the rough text of the speech I delivered that day to around a hundred and fifty southern Hebei farmers:

'Good morning, friends and colleagues.

As many of you know, my name is Phil Orlandini, and I am extremely pleased to be with you here today representing the proud American consumer.

[Chinese name of company and product, pronounced very slowly and loudly with exaggerated tones] is a product without equal. Famous both in China and all the world, the Fast State Nine Number Six is an incredible technological breakthrough, surpassing all previous accomplishments in the field of herbicide.

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today as one who has seen the Light of Fast State Nine Number Six, yea even as to a messenger unto thee. Be no longer plagued with the foul locust, weevil, or caterpillar! I tell you now that they shall be culled by divine wrath embodied as the Fast State Nine Number Six! Trust in me, and the foul hordes of thine enemies shall be hurled back into the oblivion from whence they came!

But I sense that some of my brothers and sisters remain in the shadow of doubt. Caution has served you well in the past, but the promised day has come, my brothers and sisters! Your vengeance is nigh, and the weapon of the divine is in your hands! Smite the creeping vermin of the earth! Purge the unholy and many-legged from your verdant fields!

As a humble messenger, I leave you now. There are many flocks that have yet to receive this awesome, nay, olympian gift. But as my departure from you is but a new beginning for me, I adjure you heed this summons to action today and begin your own journeys. Vaya con Dios.'

I managed to more or less stick to this because once I got going halfway through I stood up and stopped paying attention to the Chinese speech being read into the microphone next to me. Aside from the heavy drinking that occurs with the majority of male interaction in China, that pretty much capped off the weekend for me. Everyone came by and told me how impressed they were with my volume, shouting across the entire room like that, and my hosts seemed pleased that I had made an effort. After double checking to make sure that nobody had understood a word that I had said, I relaxed and enjoyed the Hebei lunch, which was much better than what I was used to in Xuchang.

Sometimes an adventure can sneak up on you, even when you've resolved yourself to boredom in your final days.

The retrospective blog post

2010-05-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

Or rather, the retrospective blog post that I WAS going to, and now am not. Instead, head over to my good friend Constantine's blog and read the interview that she was kind enough to conduct with me about my time here!

http://constantineintokyo.com/2010/05/24/midnight-runner-one-man%E2%80%99s-experience-teaching-english-in-rural-china/

She's a pro at this, and I was drunk, so overall it makes for some decent reading.

Five thousand miles overland

2010-04-24T04:26:00.000-07:00

The end is nigh!

As I'm sure all five you who read this have noticed, there have been some definite phases to my time here in Henan. Not all, unfortunately, were conducive to writing a witty and entertaining blog, as was my goal in establishing this. However! This time has passed, and I will tell you why.

Now is the time for optimism, largely because I have somehow managed to survive the majority of this second semester, and have amazing, AMAZING plans for my exit from Asia. I never really re-read my own posts, so I don't know if I mentioned this before, but after the incident in which I was fired and almost deported for daring to question the various beliefs held by my students regarding such topics as the ethnicity and political allegiance of Genghis Khan, the bondage in which all Taiwanese are kept, and for using the Great Helmsman as part of a logical argument when discussing whether one person was ever worth more than another - after that episode, my work ethic went way, way up. I was terrified, I couldn't afford to fly myself home! And guilty! I knew that, unrepentant as I might be regarding my delight in aggravating others with the Socratic method, I wasn't a very good teacher. So, after my re-assigning, I resolved to try my very best to learn how to become the teacher that these kids deserved. And I did, too! I actually tried to work for a living for the month that I had (all this happened right near the end of the semester, so I only had a little while with my new students). I made lesson plans, I tried to be entertaining, I read books and many internet articles about how to be a real teacher. By the end of that semester, I felt pretty good that I had managed to go from showing up in class and spending the first twenty minutes hemming and hawing until simply picking a random topic and assigning discussions on it, to using power points and including vocabulary.

And you know what happened when I turned in all of my actually graded final grades? My co-teacher told me that the grades were too high, and that only bell curves were acceptable. Maybe some of you are more familiar with how things are done in the American school system than I am, but I was incensed by this. I had assigned the grades that these kids had earned, and a bell curve would totally screw over most of my students, which it did. After that, I realized that aside from a few bleeding sores that shouldn't be prodded, the system that I was participating in was largely insensate to anything that I did. The students didn't care about the class, and they would rather do anything else than attend it. The school clearly didn't care if the students learned anything (this was made even more obvious several months after, when I took the CET-6 for fun and to see just how thouroughly these kids were tested on English - see my other post about Chinese standard tests for an idea of what the CET was like), so why the hell should I care either?

This was the attitude that began my second semester. The first thing I did was to tell all of my classes that attendance would never be a factor in their grades, which was the truth as far as I could tell, since the school didn't expect any kind of accuracy in grading, it just wanted its bell curve and no students complaining to it. Then, I told the students that their grades would be based entirely on 'how hard they tried', and that there would be no tests or assignments of any kind. My theory, I explained, was that the point of my class was assisted English practice, and so that was what we were going to do. Then, I also made them re-arrange all of their classes with me so that I would never have to wake up earlier than 9am, and also had four day weekends every week.

This tactic was a success, and is currently a success, because my attendance dropped off by about 90% in the second week, and now, one month out from the end of the semester, I am averaging one or two students showing up per class. This makes my life, and I'd like to think, their lives, much easier and more productive. I figure that since I'm a terrible teacher, and not willing to force myself to become a good teacher, the less time of theirs that I waste on my inept presentations and bungled activities, the better for everyone. They seem to agree, because this whole year I have gotten away with this without a murmur of suspicion from my employers, who are presumably unaware of the fact that my average class size is one and half, and that my average class length is around thirty minutes, usually revolving around walking with the student to get lunch or buy snacks, after which I go home. If I manage to get away with this for the entire semester, it will be by far the biggest con of a job that I have ever even heard of (outside of nepotism-based employment, I guess), and quite frankly the last one that I ever want to participate in. I'm so bored, you see! I'm starting to look forward to my classes as a break from having SO MUCH free time in which there is nothing to do! Well, that's not the only downside, if it even is a downside, it's the paranoia that's really getting to me these days. If anyone had even the slightest idea how it is that I do my job here, I have no doubt that not only would they fire me but they'd run me out of this town so fast that I wouldn't even have time to grab my fake new Mona Lisa hanging in my bedroom.

And on to the next topic, this paranoia is compounded by the fact that I actually want to stay until the end of my contract now! I have spent some time thinking about how it was that I actually wanted to leave, considering that I'll be free of my 'obligations' here easily two or three weeks before my residency permit expires, and what started as a vague desire to take a long train journey has become something truly epic. Having an unhealthy predisposition for hostile landscapes, and an inexplicable desire to spend multiple days on a chinese train, I found that I could combine the two into a trip to Xinjiang, China's far north-west province. At first, it was just a train ride from here to there, with half of my time being spent on the trains just covering the vast distances required. Then, I saw that Mongolia and Xinjiang share quite a bit of border, and I remembered that Mongolia loves Americans so much that we don't even need visas to stay in their country for up to 30 days. So, I figured that I could stay in Xinjiang up until the last day allowed by my residency permit, and then hop the border over into Mongolia and kick around there for a week or two before flying back to the States from Ulaanbaatar, the capital and location of half of the country's population.

But then, I realized that getting my legal time in China extended was pretty cheap, and the plan expanded to include about double the time in Xinjiang so that I could travel around the entire rim of the Taklamakan desert by bus and car, seeing the many ancient ruins of the silk road civilizations as well as the fast-fading Uighur culture. As I priced out the costs of travelling by bus and car, and staying in decidedly non-touristy cities, I realized that the less people wanted to go somewhere, the cheaper it was for me, and that practically nobody wanted to go where I wanted to go. So, my time commitment went up, and my daily costs went down - and then I read that Mongolia is the number one country in the world for camping and hitchhiking.

So currently, the plan stands as thus: Spend two to three weeks in Xinjiang, traveling around the driest and hottest desert in Eurasia during the hottest month of the year, and then attempt to cross the China-Mongolia border at a point that is 'rumored' to have allowed one or two foreigners through in the past three years, but is primarily crossed only by trucks bearing Chinese goods or oil from the Xinjiang oilfields. Once I've successfully charmed/bribed/annoyed my way through over the border, I'll be three hundred miles south across the Altai Mountain range from the nearest Mongolian city of 90,000 people, Khovd. Khovd is almost 1,600 miles from Ulaanbataar, and according to Wikipedia, 'is considered remote even for Mongolian standards.' The middle of nowhere for the most sparsely populated country in the world. Once I make to this part of the plan, I'll have about twenty days or so to make my way to the capital in order to catch my flight on time. I have no idea what will occur during this time period, and I am making no plans, but I am bringing a fair amount of cash, a tent, a sleeping bag, and things like vodka, cigarettes, and candy in order to make friends.

So, you can see that I have a lot to be excited about these days, and pretty much spend all of my copious free time reading about Xinjiang or Mongolia, learning Mongolian and Cyrillic from the 1993 Peace Corps language handbook, and watching Frasier. Since I'm saving money as much as possible until this awesome, awesome trip, probably nothing exciting will happen between now and probably a week after I get back to America and have time to write about what happened. Plus, I won't shave until I get home! I have this image in my head that showing off the luxurious neck beard that my Dutch genetics have blessed me with will make me friends among the Muslims in Xinijang. While this is normally a rule for me, I get the especially strong feeling that I'll need to ingratiate myself to as many strangers as possible in order for me to survive this journey without a good deal of suffering at the hands of my own clueless foolhardiness.

Mood Swings and Tiger Stripes

2010-03-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days, I've been pretty moody. Considering the past five months have been the most existential and imbalanced of my whole life, that's saying something. In terms of notable events, it all started with a sudden resurgence of interest in taking advantage of my location due to the fact that it both became financially feasible for me to pay for a ticket home, and the ever-growing threat (partially because I am deliberately provoking it, in small steps) of being fired once again. With the surety that as soon as next week (relatively speaking from about a week ago), I could be fired and have to head home. While this thought made me quite happy, it also reminded me that for most of the time I have lived here in Xuchang, I haven't really acquired the stories that I expected from myself. Sure, crazy shit happens all the time because this is rural china, but that doesn't count. That's daily life! That doesn't make for good stories, I needed to get out and start really doing some shit. This trend in extremely impatient adventurism resulted in an impromptu trip to Luoyang and the famous Shaolin Temple, which I will go into detail on at some other point. Suffice it to say for now that the famous Shaolin Temple is currently a modern Chinese Disneyland, full of ten foot plasma screens, blaring music, and extended go-carts to ferry about the fat Chinese tourists that can't handle the slightly inclined half-mile complex. It was worth going, because now I've been to the Shaolin Temple.
Anyways, I told you that story so I could tell you this story: I've never had long hair, which I define as past my eyes. Thanks to my total lack of trust in chinese competency in general, and observable disgust with every chinese hairstyle that I see parading around a foot underneath my own, I hadn't gotten around to getting a haircut for around four months. My hair was in danger of becoming actually long, with my vision being constantly obscured and irritated by dangling locks. Possessed with my new gung-ho drive to make whatever time I had left in China as memorable as possible, I decided that something would finally be done about these no doubt gorgeous and luxuriant but highly aggravating and inconvenient curls. I got a great suggestion from Julie that I simply dye it all some insane color, which suited my mood perfectly. I was in China, everyone already looked at me like I was a freak, and I might as well do something interesting since I wasn't in danger of alienating anyone I cared about. Once arriving at the hair 'salon', I ended up changing my mind about that a bit, since it occurred to me that my employers might very well fire me for one last step over that boundary of professionalism that I have ridden roughshod every day since my first week. Having learned from Kelly that the dying of hair usually involves bleaching the hair thoroughly first, I decided to just do that part first, and then come back later for the color once I had gauged my ability to get away with it. Also in consideration was the maintenance of my escape fund, which somewhat limited how extravagant I could make this project. This is how I looked when I arrived:

Note unruly, unkempt, beast-like hair.This is how I was looking after the first treatment, which involved much painful combing:

I kept this for about two days, and then my moodiness kicked in again and I swung the opposite direction from optimism. I got pretty upset, for reasons only vaguely relating to the hair, and decided that by God, if I couldn't solve my problems then at least I could make drastic changes to something in order to feel better. As the bleaching (predictably) did horrible things to my hair, making it all clingy and spiderweb-y, in addition to still being unmanageably long, I decided that I was going to get rid of it all. I had kind of wanted to anyways.

And so here I am, with the longest hair I've ever had, and a horrible, horrible bleach job.

It was not without it's zaniness, but I couldn't take having that shit fall into my eyes any more.

So, after borrowing Indy's shaver, change was done upon the world, and I felt better. I kept all the hair, in a garbage bag, and something amusing is going to befall somebody I know with it. No specific ideas yet, but there was too much gold-yellow hair sitting on my bathroom floor to let go to waste.

The end result will be with me for a while since I'm not going to actually shave it. I am quite excited for the prospect of my hair growing back out with weird little tips of orange-gold!

You can see the mottled, tiger-stripey quality of the bleaching, but I think it looks cool. Also, I had just taken a shower and it's decided to be hot in Henan lately. Also, it was like 1 am, after an intense period of time, when this all went down, which is why the weird stare and state of immoderate undress.

So, that's how my experiment with long, bleached hair went. And you know, I really did feel much better afterwards.

Streetlamps Marching to Cadence Unheard

2009-12-11T07:50:00.000-08:00

Ah, China. This week was a notable one, especially considering the poetic qualities of how it ended and how it began. I shall call this week 'Janus Politic', because I am only familiar enough with the roman god Janus to know that he had two faces, I think.
This week started with my return from a delightful 26-ish hour sojourn to the scenic (read: artificial lakes and poorly constructed late-90s buildings pretending to be historical relics galore) to Kaifeng, the go-to spot in northern Henan for street food. The street food was good, but not as good as the foot massages and sexual liason-themed public bath houses. Of course, that's supposing that there is any other kind, and if reading Dan Savage's column has taught me anything (which it has in fact taught me quite a significant percentage of all things that I know about sex) it's that public bath houses are really only facilitators of hot man on man lovin'. Kaifeng's are no different, which is why we wore shorts to the bath and probably half the reason why we were thrown out even though we had been told staying the night was okay. I digress, though, from the Political theme of this week and this post. Namely, upon my return to sedate and comfortable Xuchang out here in the rural sticks of China, I was informed that due to my prior antagonization of my students into the activity I like to refer to as 'thinking', I was being fired by my department. Now, this was cause for a little concern, as questions like 'when?' were avoided at first, until it became clear (in the chinese sense of the word, which means you imagine/delude yourself of 90% of the concept based on 10% of hints you think you understand) that I was in fact being given a 'test' of one week to see if I could do well with my classes. If I didn't, then I was canned with as little as three days to pack up and vacate the country. If I did well, then ostensibly I would be allowed to continue as before, minus any actual challenging of my students. Although I did not come here to teach, as I have often said before, but in fact to be a parasite/bum and feel bad about it, I felt that my chances of passing this 'test' at this point were pretty slim, so I began to count my blessings that at least this time I had managed to last more than a month and learned valuable lessons along the way. Plus, my home is a nice place, and I'd frankly be pretty happy to go back there. I'd just rather stay here.
So anyways, I get underway with this 'test' week, thinking that although they have probably already had enough of my antics, maybe I could pull something off by guilt tripping all my classes into giving me a good 'grade' for the week. Also I did actually try to become a better teacher, and in the process actually learned quite a bit. Alas, imagine my surprise when on Wednesday my handler called me into her office to tell me that instead of letting me finish the 'test' week, her department (the department overseeing the hiring and keeping of all foreign teachers, not the department of foreign languages that was sick of me) was going to cancel my classes for Thursday. Now, this was all quite perplexing and I'll save you my two-day learning/extrapolation process, but what I think actually happened was that my handler department yanked me from classes, told the languages department that they were pre-emptively firing me on their recommendation, and then re-assigned me to the international business school without telling my formerly employing department, otherwise they might have formally petitioned to have me fired, and then the handler department would have had to dredge up a whole new teacher somewhere just in time for the new semester. So while I gather that I came pretty close to getting fired and sent on my way for being a social malcontent and otherwise corrupter of the youth, I guess like many things with Chinese bureaucracy I will just never know how close exactly.
Tonight, Friday of that week, I ended it with an excellent hot pot dinner (which if any of ya'll reading this come visit me, you will be taken to this because it was the single best dinner I've had in China since arriving at Xuchang) followed by a skeezy bar for a nightcap before we all took different taxis home. However, this skeezy bar proved to be more fun than it's 28 yuan watered-down half-shot of Jack Daniels indicated, as we were treated to a very fit Chinese ladyboy in leather doing a pole dance, followed by drinking with the owner, Mr. Ma, and his older sister which we insisted we refer as 'Red Sister' in the sort of nun sense. At this point the evening took a turn to the better, as we (mostly me, being with Indy and our Chinese friend Vivian) proceeded to down about 300 yuan of Mr. Ma's alcohol according to his menu prices. Mr. Ma went from tipsy to falling down over the course of telling us about his professional photography, to telling me that he had fallen in love with Vivian and my reluctant informing him that Indy was her boyfriend, to Mr. Ma challenging me to a drinking game, losing, and then insisting that I had lost, as well as all of America, and attempting to start a fight with me or possibly Indy via proxy. It was difficult to tell with my command of Chinese, but it was all quite entertaining, and his shots were so incredibly watered down that I could drink them like iced tea, so when Vivian quite urgently told me that we should leave as he stared at her and whispered 'so beautiful', I was pretty amenable. This was followed by the yelling and falling down that I guess was the attempt to start a fight over China/U.S. superiority, but I didn't understand any of it.
Hence, the side of politics in China that I don't like, and gets me fired (almost), and the side of politics that gets me hundreds of yuan of free alcohol as well as a fun night.

Finally, some standards!

2009-10-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

So I was ordered the other day by my co-teacher (meaning, comrade-boss) to fill out an online test of some sort that had been cooked up by the brainiacs up in Beijing University. I cruise over to the link she provides me, and I discover that this is only (latest?) attempt to impose some kind of hiring standard on the inherently ridiculous position that is the government mandated Foreign English Teacher. Sounds good, right? I mean, I've gone on at length here about what a carpetbagger I am in China. A little insistence on their part that their teachers actually be qualified is totally a step in the right direction.
But, this is China, and I should never forget that. While their hearts were in the right place, the aim was more than a little off if their goal is to find competent English teachers willing to put up with a little culture shock. After the first couple of questions, I realized that timer be damned, I was going to share these Chinglish gems:

Do you think that smoking could relieve pressure?
I don't think that smoking could have any relation with pressure.
I don't know since I lack such experience.
It might be true.
I am not so sure whether it could work.
Yes, the effect is obvious.

Okay, a little skewed towards supporting smoking here, but that's okay. This is China, and it's their nice way of telling you that your delicate western sensibilities about smoking need to be squashed.

Do you think that respect is more important than food and clothes?
No, I sort of disagree with it.
I think that solving the food/clothing issue is the basis for the respect.
I don't think they are comparable.
Yes, I kind of agree with it.
Yes, it is similar to the spirit vs WUZHI.

Okay, this one really didn't quite click with me as the generic foreigner (this test is designed for only foreign teachers to take, remember). And what the eff is WUZHI? Even if I was fluent in Chinese I would probably have a hard time guessing that word. Seriously, China? Do you even think about these things before putting them out there?

Assume that you were CEO of a company, and you had to handle 7 cases, each of which could take 6 hours. How would you handle this within 3 hours?
I would work on those in the order of the hand-in dates.
I would work on those that could be solved immediately,and leave the others for the further discussion at an executive meeting.
I would ask my secretary to prioritize them.
I would set up the priorities of these cases and start with the most important or urgent one.
I would work on those in the order of the deadline.

I love this one for wasting no time in establishing that the scenario in question is completely, hopelessly, doomed to failure.

What would you do when you get angry?
I scratch my head.
I prefer to stay alone.
I look for someone to fight with.
I become talkative in order to get rid of the upset feeling.
I break things.

At least whenever the 'psychology' of this test fails to strike home with me, it illuminates some interesting corner of the Chinese psyche.

What would be your first reaction if your computer suddenly crashed while you were writing a paper and had not saved it?
I could slap the computer, though it couldn't bring back the data.
There is no better solution rather than retype all according to my memory.
I would feel very sad.
I would have to take the reality.
I could use dirty words to express my feeling.

In this one, I read 'have to take the reality' as not meaning the same thing as just retyping the data, so I picture a Chinese person sitting immobile next to their offline computer trying to establish a fundamental understanding of their new dataless reality.

How do you feel when you look at your latest photo?
I am very satisfied with it, and feel that I am becoming more beautiful.
It is not bad, and I like the way I am in the picture.
I don't like the way I look in the picture.
I wouldn't feel any difference.
I could see the time stamp on my face and feel dissatisfied with it.

Aren't time stamps (relics that they are) usually in an unobtrusive place like the bottom corners? I would feel dissatisfied with that picture too.

Would rainy weather affect your mood?
I could feel a little bit lost.
No, I could still remain happy.
No, my mood wouldn't be impacted by the weather.
It could make me feel nervous.
It could easily make me into memory.

This question's reach so far exceeds it's grasp it isn't even funny.

Someday, if you met your old lover accidentally after having lost contact for a long time, and the two of you sit down at a coffee shop, what would be the toughest topic?
The lost feeling after your break-up;
The experience of an international trip
The feeling of your break-up;
The sweet feeling of your love;

The person who interrupted your relationship;

China, why do you want to know this? What does it have to do with being a teacher in one of your crazy schools? And why would an international trip be painful? This is one of the ones where I have no idea at all where they are coming from.

If you found a package at your front door, and there was no information on the package, what would you guess?
My friends might make a practical joke on me.
It might be delivered to the wrong place.
It might be a surprise from my friends.
It might be a revenge scheme against me.
It might have dangerous stuff inside.

I picked the revenge scheme one. Who wouldn't?

Do you agree that the up-and-down is not the real life, but trivial daily life is real?
No, I would like to have an up-and-down life.
I kind of agree.
It may not match with everyone's life.
Yes, I agree.
I am kind of disagree.

By far the most nebulous question. I tried to match it with the middle answer.

If you were criticized by your boss during your workday, how do you relieve the bad mood?
I haven't found the best way to get rid of bad moods.
I might be easily lose my temper towards my family in a certain situation.
I might cry in solitude.
Shopping and eating will help me feel relief.
It would go on without any treatment.

Here, the Beijing experts unwittingly reveal that they think all foreigners have no idea how to successfully handle stress, by not even giving them that option. It reminds me of another multiple choice test I took at a temp agency in Colorado, where I was asked to describe my usage of methamphetamines as 'light and recreational' or 'heavy but controlled'.

Fill in the blank according to the logic rule: ①A,D,G,J,( )；② 21,20,18,15,11,( )；③8，6，7，5，6，4，（）
Ｍ，６，５
Ｌ，６，５
Ｌ，３，７
Ｍ，５，５
Ｌ，７，３

This fucker came out of nowhere about two thirds of the way through. Dammit, China! Psychological test, psychological! I guessed.

And then the awesome continued in with the General Knowledge section of the test:

Which personality trait is apparent among most Chinese people?
Fiery
Enthusiastic
Suppressed
Crazy

Trap question. I picked 'Suppressed' because I feel like this test has no impact on my employment.

Which day of the year is Earth Day?
25th June
4th March
14th May
22nd April

No hippies. China does not want anybody stirring up embarrassing trouble for them over the widely acknowledged and addressed reasonable consequence of China's self-improvement efforts.

When the ancients left each other, what did they send as a souvenir?
A sallow
Branches of peach
Yulan
Plum blossom

Seriously? Who the hell knows what this is? I went Three Kingdoms on this jazz and chose the peach reference. I had to look up sallow as a noun(which is middle english, not used since the 12th century), I doubt many people would even know it as the more common but still rare adjective.

The chairman of the Central Military Commission in the People's Republic of China is elected by which group?
the CPC congress
the CPC Central Committee
the NPC
the NPC Standing Committee

I think this is another question where the right answer is the wrong answer. They don't want political eggheads coming over here and being too informed.

During the teaching procedure, the information to be effectively transferred is
the teaching procedure
the methods of teaching
the content of teaching
the media of teaching and learning

I figure this one is to catch those that could fake knowing enough english to pass the other questions.

2002×20032003-2003×20022002=?
-60
0
60
80

This is zero, right? I tried actually doing it and it just confused me.

Which factor will not influence the Air Pollution Index?
SO2
NOX
CO2
H2O

Right answer is the wrong answer. Don't want anybody that will make problems for schools over inconsequential things like air pollution.

In which year was Longrnan Group UK Ltd. founded?
1721
1722
1723
1724

WTF is this shit? I blew seriously half my time trying to look this company up, and all I got for my troubles was some book publisher called Longman Group, and I couldn't even find out when that was founded. Probably not not that long ago, and really probably not having anything to do with anything.

In which continent is China?
Asia
Africa
Europe
South America

Nice, the slowball.

Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve indicates that the procedure of forgetting is
Rapid then slow
Slow then rapid
At constant speed
Accelerate evenly

I took a guess based on the pompous name that this guy's theory was just common sense and went with the first choice.

2008+2007+2006+2005-2004-2003-2002-2001+2000+1999+1998+1997-1996-1995-1994-1993+1992+……+6+5-4-3-2-1=?
284790350023
4016
3901
2510

Seriously, China. Dammit.

The system of the People's Republic of China, as a political state, is
multi-party cooperation
a people's democratic dictatorship
a constitutional monarchy
a federation

There was no way that I wasn't picking dictatorship, although of the other choices it does actually seem like the most accurate.

Which is the largest island in China?
Hainan Island
Chongming Island
Xiamen Iskand
Taiwan Island

This is a tricky one! Don't slip up and forget that Taiwan Is A Part Of China!

To cap it all off, they give you your scores as soon as you're done! Here's how I did. Good thing my contract is already signed.

Score & Analysis Evaluating Items

The score of Knowledge Test is 70 , high scoring index is Chinese Culture and Customs, Knowledge of Astronomy and Geography , low scoring index is Economic Knowledge .

The score for Psychological Test is 43 , high scoring index is Confidence, Emotional Stability, Face Tendency , low scoring index is Drink, Heart Endurance, Tolerant Capability, Logical Thinking Ability, Comprehensive Analysis Ability, Response Ability .

Advice for Testees:
Result of this evaluation only provides you a reference for knowing yourself better, rather than evidence that you will gain great success in society. During the evaluation, you are affected by test time, your mood, circumstance, and etc. If you think that the description and advice for you does not match the fact, you can think about flowing points:

1. Recalling your state when answering the test, whether you are concentrated or not
2. Recalling whether you slide over yourself consciously or guess the intention of testers
3. Ask classmates or friends around you how they think about you
4. Consult professional evaluation advisers or teachers in employment center for further advice

Wish you success!

Man there were no questions about drinking, you damn liars. OR astronomy! Jesus, China.

Doldrums

2009-10-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

Seven days until we get paid. Having squandered most of my reserves two weeks ago on a puppydog, today I am writing with no wine and a dumbass dog licking my besandaled feet. The dog is okay, I can deal with him. All of his actions fall into two non-exclusive categories, gross and stupid. Usually most of what he does falls into just stupid, so it's cute. Being about seven months old and a boxer/bulldog mix, the only thing he does that is really annoying is peeing in the apartment. Having never been housetrained by his Chinese owners, I can understand this. We are making progress, but unfortunately he is still a puppy and has a tiny bladder. A drink of water will make it's way through his system (seemingly) in roughly an hour and a half. Since we will be living together in this apartment, the best solution we can hope for here is to get used to each other's schedules. Like I said, progress is being made. We have accidents, but those are mostly because I am too lazy to take him out as often as he needs rather than willful acts of defiance on his part.
The wine situation, on the other hand, I am having a hard time coping with. Right now I am experimenting with tea and Bai Jiu, that delightful Chinese beverage which they so criminally and enthusiastically like to compare to whiskey. In hot green tea, I suppose that it's better than drinking the stuff straight, but not only does it still taste pretty terrible, it is entirely lacking in that deep satisfaction that I derive from holding a bottle of wine by the neck and taking gulps. If they had paper bags in China, I would keep one in my apartment just to put my wine bottles in before drinking them. I would even name it something appropriate, like The Colonel. Alas, this is a pleasure that will have to wait with many others.
It's so strange to consider that in a week, I will have more money than I know what to do with, and that this will be true until the summer of next year. Now that I'm actually almost out of money, I am finding that I have a difficult time imagining what it will be like. Even making lists in preparation lacks any real inspiration and feels more like just throwing out ideas. I am sure that when I finally go back to the super-mall with thousands and thousands of yuan in hand after two weeks (and more than a year of living off of small-time pay) of maintaining a thirty-yuan per day maximum, it will be one of the more surreal experiences in China.
To cap all this off, enjoy some of the poetry that I asked my students to write about the fall leaves.

Fallen leaves like people in the society
Some will fly to the sky by the wind
enjoying the sunshine;
some will fall to the river, doing a
long travel;
And some will melt into the mud,
giving their children food.

In autumn the trees are brown;
The little leaves come tumbling down;
They do not make the slightest sound;
But lie quietly on the ground;
Until the wind comes puffing by;
And blows them off towards the sky;
The wind will blow their freshness into you,
and the storms their energy;
While cares will drop away from you like the
leaves of autumn.

Winter must be cold for those with no warm
memories
Night must be long for those with no sweet
dreams
So I beg the reddest leaf from the fall
Put it beside my pillow
Warm my memories
And sweeten my dream

When young and in bud,
we can see a heaven in your pretty leaves.
Fall comes, everything changes.
You are attracted bu the love of wind
You leave us without words, dancing and singing in the embrace of it.
Wind is heartless. He deserts you and throws you to the ground.
Everyone can hear your broken hearts, but the wind you are madly in
love with leaves you with bursting laughter.
Then you are old and in mud,
leaves us a hell in your dead.

In love with you art the first sight.
Your beautiful shapes, your various colors,
all made me fascinated.
The moment you are born, you know what's waiting
for you.
You are born for the company of trees.
You are born for the beautifying of environment.
You are born for the stability of the soil.
You know one day you would fall for another
generation.
You just leave the world in your favorite state.
I'm not sad. I know you're waiting for me another spring.

Leaf, a wing which can not fly.
Green, red, yellow and grey.
You end your life in a short fall.
While you pursue freedom by your whole life.
Persistence, insistence.
Like a fallen leaf dancing in the wind.
I keep on drifting, whirling through my life.
Never give up my dream.
Never lose hope.

The sky is blue and high
in this autumn time
With the autumn wind's call
the beautiful leaves begin to fall
Like angels in yellow and red
Dance the last time in their lives

Tuvan throat singers

2009-10-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

I've spent a lot of time hemming and hawing over what to write here. Almost every day, I write emails to people, and I have a good friend to talk to all day. Yet I still feel the call to close the doors to my smoking room, light up a pipe of tobacco and open a bottle of wine, and write something. Last time I ended up reading a lot more than I wrote, old journal entries that I've made infrequently over the years when there was something that I had to explore on paper before my mind would let it rest. The time was well spent, and convinced me that this blog will not be those journals for me. Or, at least, that they don't have to be in order for me to write about something. Hence, tonight I have no writer's block as I enjoy my room full of excellent German tobacco and mediocre-but-trying Chinese red wine. Tonight I want to tell some stories about what I've been doing with my time here. I'll start with today and move backwards, specifically starting with my trip to the underground market near the train station. This market is a magical wonderland of Chinese capitalism, full of sex toys, sex drugs, knives, tasers, swords and huge Guan Yu halberds, pornography, cheap jewelry, watches, binoculars and microphone guns, children's toys, calculators, and all manner of home entertainment technology. I love this market. I went there to get a birthday present, which I did, but I am regularly enticed by the other speciality of this market: fake Zippos. These are carried by almost every store/stand and come in endless variety. Indy got one that seemed to be promoting the Third Reich, and today I succumbed myself to similarly long-held affection: fucking sweet wizards.

How could I say no to that? Plus, the flame is some kind of insane butane (that changes from blue to red over three seconds) or something that just incinerates everything that I have tried to light with it so far. Awesome.
Backtracking a bit to earlier in the day, Indy and I had an excellent conversation detailing our opinions of sexual openness that spanned quite a bit of time. I'll not reveal his details here, but I have no problem admitting that ultimately I felt like I was a bit of a bohemian. Especially after reading some of my older journal entries, which (surprise, surprise) dealt with my opinions on sexual openness, often mirroring his current opinions. It seems a little amazing that one can change so much in such a relatively short time, and I did kind of wonder if I was not so much 'enlightened' as 'trashy' about sex these days. I didn't feel trashy, of course, I know that he didn't mean it like that either - but I wonder at how very hedonistic it all is these days. Do we just try everything until we hit some kind of deeply programmed limit? Or do we have to draw those limitations for ourselves, otherwise we simply have no boundaries at all? Probably a moot point as we will both likely be as celibate as monks for the next nine months. And even if we weren't, these Chinese ladies seem much closer to his own views than mine. Now I worry that I might send a tiny naked lady fleeing from my bedroom, scarred forever.
Skipping a little farther back to last Saturday, we had the pleasure of celebrating the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (no longer celebrated in mid-autumn for the good of the People) in our own way. My plans for the evening consisted of buying a great deal of alcohol and some crummy discount moon-cakes, hoofing it to a roof somewhere on campus, and getting wasted on grain alcohol while staring up at the moon. Alas, it came to naught. We ended up getting shanghaied by a student who has helped me out enough that I am indebted to him although I don't really like him. Apparently his friends had all abandoned him to go snog with their girlfriends or see their families in Xuchang, and so we got roped into dinner and admiring the moon with him. This was decidedly dull, although most native Chinese speakers are able to feed us much better than we can feed ourselves, so at least dinner was enjoyable and different. However, once we got home the drinking was allowed to start in earnest, which we did to the accompaniment of a bootleg pornography DVD that I had purchased earlier in the day called 'American Female Jail'. The film turned out to be somewhat misleading, in that it was actually shot in the 70s, in Brazil, and was shot in Italian. The English dub wasn't bad, but it unfortunately ran at the same time as the much louder Chinese dub. This made understanding what little plot existed quite difficult, although the drinking helped. Before we had made it more than twenty minutes into this experience, there was a knock on my door. Our only neighbor in our section of the building had stopped by, and he had brought two bottles of bai jiu. Now, as a little explanation here, the first week that I had lived in this building I didn't have a key for the front security door for our section. Every time I wanted to come in, I had to call all the apartments until somebody answered, and bumblingly explain in Chinese that 'I ams the American teacher what lives on number one floor, and I has had no door-thing yet froms mine university' and then they would buzz me in. To say thanks once I finally had my own key, I bought them a bunch of moon cakes. Earlier the night of the Festival, we had also stopped by to essentially pawn off the extra moon cakes that we had no intention of eating after we had split from the annoying lonely student. I guess all this made some kind of impression, because now we were getting the full hospitality treatment from the father of the family. He had even brought a sack of salted beef! Because Americans like beef so much. However, as we had no glasses aside from the normal-sized juice cups provided to us by the university, one can imagine our terror as our neighbor jovially whipped out a bottle of grain alcohol and started pouring us full glasses of the stuff. If anyone has ever drank with me in the States, you know that bai jiu has been an ordeal that I inflict on my friends with great relish, being generally considered to be the worst tasting alcohol known to civilized man, and usually between 50-60% alcohol to boot. It is usually made of sorghum, millet, and peas. As soon as he was done pouring, we toasted. Over the next hour and half, we finished the bottle and had actually learned quite a bit about each other. His name mysteriously translated as literally The King of Germany, and he came from Shandong province. He had a PhD in Agriculture, and had arrived at this university only about a month before I had. He left with us fairly drunk and with a whole extra bottle of bai jiu for ourselves. This bai jiu, I admit, was actually far superior in taste to the sort of stuff that I buy in the States for the Man-Test factor. But as anyone who has had bai jiu inflicted on them knows, the taste somehow stays with you for hours and hours after you stop drinking, even if you only have one shot. Every burp especially will be total memory recall of that particular flavor. Afterwards, Indy and I made a vblog that I have yet to actually watch for myself. I hear there are sound problems, and I am not surprised.
Before that, I have just a few incidents that will stick in my memory. The first (and second) time using my newly-purchased water card that allowed me to fill a three liter jug at a special purified water station outside my apartment. There are two buttons on this station, a big green button, and a big red button. Twice, I have stood at that station with my jug overflowing, water pouring out everywhere all over the sidewalk and frantically pounding that red button, while the machine played 'The Blue Danube' at a mockingly increasing pace. Those two have been some of the most surreal Chinese moments that I have had. Walking through the grocery store and hearing an incredibly long, drawn out piano version of 'Greensleeves' while I look at an 80 yuan bottle of A1 Steak Sauce.
I thought I had a few more, but I am almost through with my bottle of wine and my pipe of tobacco, and the Tuvan throat singing I am listening to is overwhelming my capacity for recollection. Add to my lifetime list of things to accomplish, go to Tuva and listen to an actual performance of this incredible dual-pitch singing. Perhaps the Trans-Siberian trip being planned could divert to Tuva? This is now unavoidable.
I would say zai jian, but au revoir sounds so much more appropriate. Au revoir, dear readers, and bayartai, saikhan amraarai.