words
chapter six @ 1999 September
Jinzhou's Guan Yin Cave in winter
more sports...life on campus...student cheating...and...
ElectriCity (the jinzhou power plant)
When I was working on Chuck in China 5, I found I had way too much material from my Jinzhou days. So some of it has spilled over into this, Chuck in China 6. In working on this issue, I STILL ended up cutting out stuff - perhaps it will live to see another day in a future Chuck in China. But it's time Chuck @ China move on to life in Suzhou. So this issue deals
with a few more stories about life in Jinzhou. And with it, I close that Chapter on my life in China. The upcoming Chuck in Chinas 7 and 8 will focus on Suzhou. So to those amongst you still waiting for a glimpse of Suzhou: soon....soon....soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these last few Jinzhou stories.
"Football".
Say "Football" to any English-speaker in China, indeed anyone IN THE WORLD outside of the U.S.A., and it immediately brings to mind a group of guys running around in baggy shorts, shirts flapping in the wind while chasing a round, octagonally dimpled ball across a large field and trying to kick it into a large net.
Judging by what I have learned since leaving the lower 48, that it is a fact: Soccer IS the world's most popular game. All day, everyday, you can usually find at least one game on your TV. Almost every middle school, high school, and, of course, college and university I have visited here has a soccer field. And there's usually a group of guys playing at any given
hour of the day.
Since "landscape maintenance" does not appear to be a job classification in the Chinese educational system, usually the fields are bare dirt. (I have yet to see, nor thankfully hear, the incessant drone of-a single power mower here. What little grass you do see in Jinzhou is always "off limits" to walking across much less playing on. The few instances of "lawn
mowing'" I have witnessed are done with sickles.) Jinzhou residents bill their city as China's Windy City. I have known Chicago (America's Windy City). And Jinzhou? You're no Windy City!
But the wind can kick up pretty good here. Jinzhou is less than 100 miles due-east of the Mongolian plains and has some low mountains around the city which funnel the winds coming out of Mongolia. So though it ain't Chicago, when those winds come barreling through, they can kick up a pretty mean dust storm off the farms and soccer fields. (Add in the coal dust
from the power plant and the fact that no one ever seems to clean the streets in Jinzhou and, you get a pretty nasty lungful and some pretty painful eyefuls of dust and cinders. Teacher Donna used to wear her sunglasses even on cloudy days just to keep the dust out).
OK, enough about the environment. Back to those dusty soccer fields. As mentioned, they're usually full. As are the basketball courts (as I reported in Chuck in China 5). It seems as if most students have a preference for one or the other - there are the footballers and there are the basketballers. But for watching sports on TV,
Soccer wins hands down. And most of my female students enjoy watching soccer games on TV as well. (I have yet to see a group of women playing soccer here, and I rarely see them playing basketball - though my female students tell me that is because if the courts are crowded, as they usually are, the boys will take over their basket and say "no girls allowed". Just
like 5th Grade boys at my old grade school but these are 21 year-old Chinese college guys. No wonder they can't get a date.)
To the constant dismay and frustration of 1.3 billion people, China's men's soccer team has never qualified for the World Cup tournament. (To their great pride and satisfaction, though, the Chinese Women's team made it to the finals of this year's Women's World Cup. Maybe the boys here should step aside and let the women use the soccer fields and basketball
courts-they seem to be more talented athletically.) So in addition to rooting for the hapless China team, most people here follow European soccer like a religion (so to speak). Many students are rabid about the Manchester (England) United. In Jinzhou and Suzhou, it's Manchester United in Soccer. It's the Chicago Bulls in basketball. (It's "Huh??" in baseball and
American football).
Last year, the World Cup was held in France. Despite the absence of a Chinese entry in the '98 World Cup, though, Jinzhou College was primed and pumped for the three-week long tournament. Since France is, what, 7 hours behind China, this meant that the two televised matches a day would be at 11:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. here. Now you have to understand, students are
not permitted to have TV's in their rooms. (I'd like to see an American college try that.) And it's not as if they could fit a TV in their dorm room. They run about 15'x15' with 8 students per room. (Like to see an American college try that!) And even if they did sneak one in, and avoid the daily room inspections, the college SHUTS OFF the electricity to the dorms
every evening at 10:30 p.m. (Like to see an American college try THAT!) This could get out of hand if the students can't watch the games. No problem. The college, realizing they had to do something, decided to open up two of the lecture halls with TV's so the students could jam 150 or so people into each room to watch the matches. The problem for me was that the
classroom building where the halls were located is across the plaza from my building. And the lecture hall windows open into the plaza-so from 11:00 p.m. to about 5:30 a.m. every day for three weeks, the chants, cheering, yelling, and, when that rarity in soccer-a goal- was scored, the screaming, I didn't even have to watch the game on TV, I knew in advance which
teams the players favored in each match (e.g. Iran over the U.S.) and could count the screams vs. the groans and come up with an approximate score. (Incidentally their were more screams than groans in that Iran-U.S. match. As you'll recall, the finals involved Brazil vs. France.
One thing I have noticed in China, they are a country of front-runners when it comes to choosing favorites (Brazil, Manchester, the former Chicago Bulls), so I was not surprised when I told my class the day before the match that I was rooting for France. (As if I had a clue. I just like to root for the underdog in games where I have no allegiance.) Sure enough,
the next day I got to gloat for the first and probably only time I'll ever gloat about a soccer match.
It was an interesting three-week study into the psyche of the Chinese sports mind, seeing who they would choose for each match and the intensity of interest. But I was glad it was over. Now I could sleep peacefully again. Until the 6:20 a.m. reveille call every morning.
That's the Chinese word for American football. "Olive Ball" because the ball is shaped like an olive, I guess. (Though you'd need an awfully big martini glass for that.)
It is basically non-existent here. Sure there might be a film clip occasionally in some news blurb about, say, the culture of America. It is not covered in the sports news (nor is baseball-unless the Chinese Little League team wins the Little League World Series, I guess). In my whole time here, I have seen exactly one American football game. That was in a bar
one night in Suzhou which had a satellite dish and could pick up Star TV-a cable channel in China that is only accessible by swank hotels and foreign resident complexes, I guess, to show visiting foreigners that China has all the amenities of the west. (You can get HBO, too, only in such places). Star and HBO are not provided to the common people (including us
foreigners who live here everyday).
So I'm in this Suzhou bar one night, playing a game of pool when I looked up and saw a football game on the TV. I was playing a British guy at the time and he couldn't understand why I dropped my pool cue and dashed over to the TV. It had been a year and some months since I had seen a game. The uniforms were not recognizable to me so at first I thought maybe it
was some Division III college game. At least the skill level looked that way. Finally, one team scored and they flashed the score. It was Frankfurt and some other team-a European NFL game. A German guy was standing nearby so I asked him how big the European NFL was in Germany. He happened to be from Frankfurt, and not recognizing the uniforms said, never seen a
game. Basically, he told me, the only people that go to the Frankfurt games are American soldiers stationed there, American businessmen, and the invited guests of both. "No German cares about such games," he told me flatly. Nor did anyone else in the bar. I was the only American, and while a couple of the Chinese women were interested in watching the game with me,
women and Americans don't count in the ex-patriate bars here, so we were soon outvoted and they switched the TV to a soccer match. Thus ended my brush with televised football in China.
As far as the Super Bowl goes, the day came and went with nary a word about it in the Chinese newspapers or TV news shows. I got breathless reports by e-mail from friends, but here, it was just another day. With all my TV appearances in both Jinzhou and Suzhou, I believe I am a more well-known figure in China than, say, John What'shisname-y'know the quarterback
for Denver.
Having experienced all this, I thought back on all the Super Bowls I have watched and recalled how ALWAYS, at some point during a lull in the game, NBC or CBS or FOX or ABC and the NFL will make a point of saying how this is the most widely watched TV show in the world and how 1 billion people (or whatever number they say) will watch the game. Let me tell you
something-it ain't true. Maybe it's being carried on enough stations that that number is possible, but I can tell you that in China, the only people watching it are the few Americans holed up in the swank hotels at and awake at 6:00 in the morning. And as far as the rest of the non-American world, no one else gives a damn. The only people watching in Europe or Japan
or wherever are American businessmen or American soldiers. And that's it, folks.
Still don't believe me? I'm a member of a mailing list for teachers here in China. We often field questions from students and Chinese English teachers particularly on cultural questions. Here's a copy of the question from a Chinese teacher:
"Here is more questions on the meanings of certain words" .....(other questions deleted)....." (4.) Bears game
This seems to be man's game. What exactly is it?"
Answered by a Canadian teacher: "the bears? I know of the chicago cubs (baseball) and the vancouver grislies
(basketball) DOH!! upon searching the web.. yes.. NFL team chicago bears..."
Boy, I hope I didn't insult all you Bears fans out there by including this elucidating exchange proving once and for all, Ha!, that Chicago is in fact, NOT the center of the universe. (Note to casual readers, this is a little harmless fun, a dig at the Chicago-branch of my family. All non-family readers, please ignore this paragraph.)
Anyway, I still like football. I mean Ganlanqiu. It's just that not too many other non-Americans do. Not the Germans, not the British, not the French, not the Irish, not the Scottish, not the Australians (all but one, she liked playing with the football), not the
Japanese, not the Koreans, not the Chinese (although they loved trying to throw it; more on that in a sec), not the Danish, not the Finnish, not the Austrians, not the Indians (from India, stupid, not the baseball team), not the Italians, not the Belgians, not the Norwegians, none of 'em, folks. So during the next Super Bowl, when they cut away and show some
Japanese announcers announcing the game and talk about how it's being watched all over the world, you can wink, and tell your friends it just ain't so. Tell 'em Chuck in China told you.
Last summer ('98), in Suzhou, four of my fellow foreign teachers: Billy Schneider and Sharon Sturtevant (though she may be Sharon Sturtevant-Schneider by now), and Jennifer Quadrizius were on our way to a disco in the hoity-toit (for China) central Suzhou shopping district. We were walking past a swank athletic goods store (as opposed to one of the myriad
stalls-this one had marble floors, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, REAL Nike merchandise, and air-conditioning. Billy (and Sharon and Jen, for that matter) could play-we sometimes played hoops if the temperature was under 100 degrees and we had organized a few baseball games with the students since I had bought Peggy's bat with
me to Suzhou. Well, we went into the store hoping to find some softballs, but, lo and behold, up on the wall next to a dozen basketballs and another dozen soccer balls, was a lone, lonely football. An American football. It was a smaller than a regulation-size-about the size of a middle-school league football, but it was a "GANLANQIU!". Sold! I could barely bargain, I was so excited (but I did get a few yuan knocked off the price). So out into the early-evening madness that the streets of Suzhou become, the four of us went-giddy that we had uncovered such a treasure.
[Non-Americans and non - Ganlanqiu fans can skip this paragraph as it invokes lingo and jargon unique to Ganlanqiu.] Dodging bicycles, careening taxis, cruising Lexuses (Lexi?),
and the omnipresent (and omni-obnoxious), sanlunches we started running pass-patterns in the middle of the road and tossing that olive all over downtown Suzhou. "Billy, 10 and out!" I snapped and hit him with a perfect spiral as he baby-stepped just inside the curb for a first down.
Boom, he hit Sharon with a frozen rope as she ran a button-hook. Sharon tossed an alley-oop to Jen who then tossed one back to me. Billy ran a fly, through assorted traffic and I lofted a bomb as all eyes (western and otherwise) watched as Billy leaped 40 yards downroad and grabbed it for 6.
AIYAHHH! Those crazy foreigners and their crazy games.
Returning to Jinzhou with my new football, I later had the opportunity to try to teach some Chinese friends how to throw it. Chen wanted to have a try. Then everyone who stopped to watch wanted to have a try. The security guards abandoned the front gate of the school to come down and have a try.
As mentioned in Chuck in China 5, the Chinese have no natural proclivity or skill for throwing any kind of ball much less the "Olive Ball". It was not a pretty sight. But no arms or windows were broken.
I'm from Cleveland. Ke Li Fu Lan as they say in China. If you know the slightest thing about Cleveland, you know that it is a city that is rabid about it's Ganlanqiu team: The Cleveland Browns (or, I guess in Chinese, it would be Ke Li Fu Lan Kafeeren - Cleveland Brown
People). But of course, as I have just posited and proved American football isn't even on the radar here.
So imagine my surprise when one Saturday morning, I head over to the huge wholesale market in Jinzhou where the already cheap prices for stuff in China are even cheaper. This is the place, Mike told me, where most of the street vendors buy the stuff THEY sell on the streets. Worth a trip, I figured.
I wanted to buy a pair of jeans and some Christmas presents for the folks back home. So I'm wandering around this HUGE indoor market with rows and rows of stalls selling all the stuff they sell at the street markets, but for much less. For no particular reason, I stop at one of maybe 40 stalls that are selling jeans. I ask her if she has any jean's my size (China
uses a different measuring system, except for jeans-the jeans all carry western measurements).
So she starts hunting through her piles and as she does, my eyes wander along the table and at the wall behind her stand where she has other items of clothing hanging on display, like shirts, and sweaters and jackets, and ...... WAHHHH! ...... A CLEVELAND BROWNS JACKET with logo, helmet,
script lettering, and everything. I CANNOT BELIEVE MY EYES. I ask her to take it down. Yep! Real thing. I have the same kind of jacket, a Mirage jacket, for the Cleveland Indians baseball team which cost me $110 at Jacob's Field in Cleveland (including the 10% season ticket holder discount) and here, in Jinzhou, China of all places, I find an identical Cleveland
Browns jacket.
I look at it closely and it has the NFL licensed tag on it. (Of course that means nothing in China. The second biggest counterfeiting business here (well, third-biggest if you don't count the guys who counterfeit Chinese money) behind counterfeiting name-brand clothing, are guys who counterfeit the tags and logos. (The government here busted a company last year
that was making counterfeit UL (Underwriters Lab) tags and selling them to electric appliance makers to slap on their products that were being exported to the U.S. because the U.S. requires all overseas electrical imports to have UL approval!) Anyway, I examined the coat closely (as you must do with everything before you buy it here) and, it had a couple very minor
flaws, but was good quality. I figured it had been rejected from a legitimate product run for an American company and so went out to the market here. Still, if you saw this coat in a Cleveland store, you probably wouldn't have looked twice and snapped it up for $110.
That's me in The Browns Jacket with Tyler
one of my Suzhou students at the Temple of Mystery
on Guanqian Street in Suzhou.
Let's bargain, lady! By this time she had found a few pairs of Chinese jeans which matched my purported size. They looked a little big, and this was an indoor market-no dressing rooms. The best I could hope for (and this is very common, folks) was to step behind her table and she would hold up a sheet while I tried them on behind the sheet. Well, A 6'2" foreigner
standing behind a sheet in a crowded market with, of course, a crowd already gathering, was not MY idea of Saturday morning entertainment. She understood. She said, I think, "Take them home and if they don't fit bring them back." Yeah, right-as if your stand will be here again, I wanted to say. But I also wanted that jacket. Badly.
I'm thinking "She's gonna start at 100 Yuan for the jeans and 200 for the jacket 'cuz she knows I want it 'cuz I told her that's my hometown. So, I'll try to bargain her down to 100 for the jacket and 50 for the jeans and....."
"One hundred yuan," she says.
"For which?" I say.
"For both the jacket and jeans." she says. She's starting at 50 yuan less than I wanted to end up at. Incredible!
"Tai Gui Le!" I cried. "Sixty yuan and not a penny more."
"AIYAHHH!" she cried, "I paid 80 for them! You want to take the food out of my child's mouth!"
"Hu shuo," I answered firmly, "You people always try to cheat foreigners! I am not a tourist. I live in Jinzhou. I teach your students. Maybe even your child!"
"Ah, a teacher! I'm sorry. Yes, I'll give you a special discount. Ninety yuan."
"Eighty." I say.
"AIYAHHH!" says she.
I make like I'm going to walk away.
"Laoshi! O.K." she says looking slightly dismayed.
I hand her the money, she hands me the jeans and jacket. Then she winks. "Ni Zhongguo Tong!" she says smiling. "You know how to act like a Chinese." She is happy, I am happy. No, not really. I probably should have bargained her down to 70 yuan.
Total converted cost $10: $5 for a pair of $50 jeans (in the U.S.) and $5 for a Mirage Browns Jacket that would have cost $120 U.S. (without the discount). Or in Chinese yuan (8 yuan to $1 U.S. roughly): 80 Yuan for a pair of jeans and a jacket that would have set me back $170 (1360 Yuan) in the U.S. Now you understand a little better when I keep saying the
cost of living here is orders of magnitude less than in the west. Plan your next shopping spree at the Jinzhou Wholesale Market, folks. Vendors are standing by to take your orders, now.
Oh, and about the jeans, got home, tried 'em on and they were, indeed, too large. Two sizes so (it's the food and basketball and the walking and exercising, I guess). It took me a few weeks to make it back to the other side of town where the market is and I wandered around the maze of aisles for a while and stopped at two or three stands which I thought might be
hers but weren't. Too, I kept an eye-peeled for Browns jackets hanging on walls but no, I had the only one (possibly in all of China). I stopped at one more and, yes, that was the place. The old lady wasn't there but her helper (who I didn't remember) was. And she remembered me. And when I handed her the jeans she said, no problem, and sorted through the pile of
jeans and pulled out few pairs a couple of sizes smaller. I looked 'em all over, pulled out the best-looking ones, thanked her and went on my way. No return-receipt necessary. No complaint about "it took you three weeks to come back!" Just a smile, a nod, and a new pair of jeans. God I love this place!
Oops, this has turned from football to shopping. So let me tie it all together for you before we move on:
Any Browns fan who wants to buy a lightly worn Browns jacket for, say $40 firm (hey that's 67% off the Browns Stadium prices) can e-mail me, OK? I'll even autograph it. You want Elway's autograph or mine? Or Michael Jordan's? No Problem!
In Jinzhou, the students are great. Always helpful, always friendly. If you happened across them on the streets of Jinzhou, they'd want to hang out with you. Now for a foreigner in Jinzhou (which has exactly 10 westerners in a city of 600,000) a six block walk entails walking a gauntlet of 400 or 500 people, vendors, sanlunche drivers (they are the worst) all of whom know exactly one English word: "Hellooo!" And all of whom feel it is their duty to practice it on you. Your ears ring from hearing "Hellooo!" And it isn't really a greeting. It's more like it's the only word they know so they say it. It gets very tiring
very quickly.
I tell my students this, but, like Sue in the following story, they think I over exaggerate. Or they say, "Oh, they're just being friendly!"
"Hu shuo!", says I. It's like a gag reflex here: "Look there's a foreigner! Let's say something to him!"
As if I (or any of us here) need 1,200,000 people greeting us every 10 meters all day long. We may as well have just dropped down to earth from Mars. But of course, I must be exaggerating.
So I have this favorite favorite exercise I use with students when I walk somewhere with them. I bet them an ice cream that more than 20 people will shout out "helllooo" as we walk.
"Oh no, Chinese people are too polite to do such things," they tell me.
So we walk. And people shout. And my students count. And I always win.
"Now," I tell them, "buy me that ice cream."
But I'm exaggerating. Actually, I end up paying for the ice cream. The students don't have much money. I write it off as lesson to them: don't bet against a sure thing: A foreigner in China is target practice for every person here who ever learned a single English word. It's not cloying. It's annoying.
I am exaggerating.
Not.
It's 2:30 in the morning on November 17, 1998 and I am standing in the middle of the dirt soccer field at Jinzhou College. It is 5 degrees F but it doesn't feel like it-it feels more like the -13 degree C that that converts to. There's not a cloud in the inky sky above as I stand on the frozen tundra that is the soccer field and gaze up at the sky. I am not
alone.
"WAHHH!" comes a chorus of about 300 other people, heads all tilted skyward. A streak of light bursts across the sky and a brief moment later vanishes. Then another. And another. Every minute or so. We have come out to this frozen field in the wee hours of the morning to watch the Leonids
Meteor Shower.
For days beforehand, there had been excited anticipation as China was supposedly one of the best places to view this rare event. The earth was to pass through the tail of the Leonids Meteor at 2:30 a.m. China time. Back in the States it was daytime, so they couldn't see much. They were predicting up to a hundred "shooting stars" a minute.
Even though we are in the middle of the city, there are virtually no streetlights in Jinzhou other than on the main roads. Side streets are illuminated only by the neon signs of the various shops and restaurants. (China drips with big, fancy neon signs at night-just like in the pictures.) You don't get that huge glow over a city as in the States. And at 2:30
a.m., most of the neon has gone to bed. So we had perfect conditions to view the Shower.
But alas, it was a let down. The predictions were way off. I saw one every one or two minutes. Had it been a warm night, it probably would have been more enjoyable, but standing there in the first freezing cold of the season shivering and hopping up and down to stay warm with eyes constantly turned to the heavens (if you blink you might miss one) ...well the show
fizzled out just like the few dozen meteors we saw. So I headed back to bed. Over the next hour, the WAHHH!'s from over on the field grew dimmer, fewer, and farther between. The Leonid Meteor Shower was more like a Drizzle.
busted:
student cheating in china
a plague on china's house
Students in China work hard. Their class load is much greater then the typical American university student's class load. They are in class from 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. until noon and then from 1:30 or 2:00 p.m. until 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. every weekday. After dinner, hordes of students descend on the library or the classrooms to sit and study for 4 more hours. Even on
Friday and Saturday nights-the classrooms are full with students studying quietly. Imagine that scene at an American college! (To my Chinese readers: if you want to find college students on a Friday or Saturday night, you must go to the bars and clubs (discos)!)
After all that studying, it's back to the dorms where it's lights out at 10:30 p.m. Since all the electricity is shut off in the dorms, there's no way for students to study beyond 10:30 unless ..... yes! most of the students have these big flashlights with rechargeable batteries. Of course, the school has banned these and if a student is caught with one by the
dorm master, they usually have to pay a 100 Yuan bribe so the dorm master won't report them. They also take massive amounts of electricity to recharge, another reason the school bans them. (Yes the schools, like everyone else here has to pay their electric bills. Whaddya think this is, a Communist country, or what?) So it's quite common to see the students sneak
their re-chargers into the classroom so they can recharge the batteries during class. If they left them back in the dorm, the dorm master would find them and, you know what......
So with all this diligence and attention to their studies, we can say, by all accounts, that the Chinese students are model students.
Until test time.....!
You cannot imagine how much cheating goes on during tests! And I always give open book tests! I mean...................
I had heard stories, but nothing prepared me for my first round of tests. First, the classrooms are jammed so they are elbow-to-elbow. Their eyes are constantly wandering - no matter how much chalk I throw at them (my trademark is throwing little pieces of chalk at them when I see their eyes wandering). So I warned my classes repeatedly, over and over again that
I hate cheating. That I was very strict about it. That back in the States, when I caught students cheating, I severely punished them. That I had written a cheating code for my U.S. classes that was adopted by my college's department. I even had the best English student in each class repeat what I said in Chinese so the nuances would not be lost.
So for final exams at the end of my first term in Jinzhou, I was loaded for bear. And my students knew it. My first problem was that I had two sections of the same class, Survey of America, and, of course, wanted to give them the exam at the same time. I have yet to master the skill of being in two places at once (though I'm working on it). Luckily for me, there
happened to be an American teacher who was visiting the school from Guangzhou (Canton). So I asked Sue to give me a hand. She had been teaching grade-schoolers in Guangzhou and thought it would be interesting to see what a college class was like here. So she agreed to proctor one section while I covered the other. I warned her about the cheating and told her to take
no prisoners. From her bemused smile and nodding assent, I had the feeling she was saying "C'mon. I'm a teacher, for God's sake. I've seen it all. I know how to handle this." When she and I walked into the first classroom and I introduced her to the students, telling them she would be their proctor tonight as I had to be in the other classroom, the students relief
was palpable. I knew she was in trouble.
I headed over to the other classroom confident that Susan would prevail. When I walked into that classroom, the resulting dismay was equally palpable. So off we went. To be honest, this group was pretty good. My warnings had sunk in, apparently. The test had a time limit, and a tight one at that. Since I prefer to give open book tests in America, I had carried
that policy with me to China. They had never heard of such a thing. But I've been doing it for years and I know how to write tests to that format. And a time limit is a part of that. (If you spend your time looking, often fruitlessly, for the answer in your book rather than having learned the material, you will do very poorly, indeed, on my tests.) Well things went
real well through the first 118 minutes. I only had to resort to the wandering eyes/chalk ploy twice. Then, when I called two minutes, all hell broke loose.
Everyone started talking at once in Chinese (as if I knew what they were saying)! So I called time and told them to pass in their papers. Nothing! They kept writing. And talking! I started running around the class grabbing papers. I had to wrestle away some of their tests. I made my way around the room and at last, near the rear and in the middle of the row, this
is what I saw:
One girl was writing furiously. She had another girl's test in her left hand. And three girls in front of her were turned around telling her (presumably-I'm sure they weren't discussing the Manchester United) the answers. Like a bull in a china shop, so to speak, I pushed my way down the row and reached out to grab her test. SHE HAD THE NERVE TO BRUSH MY ARM
AWAY! Rather forcefully, too! I mean, what's up with THAT? She's trying to shield her paper as goes on copying the other test. I was able to grab the other student's test from her left hand but she kept going....scribbling,,,knocking my arm away....scribbling....knocking my arm away. I finally wrenched her test away. And then I went ballistic.
I called her every name in the book in front of all of the other students. At least the Chinese ones I knew. Like Er Bai Wu, Ben Dan, Da Sha Gua. (Stupid, idiot, turtle's egg-the latter is an insult here.) In all the commotion, I had failed to note which students paper she had
had in her left hand. After most of the students had left, she came to me in tears.
"Give me a second chance," she pleaded.
She had been so blatant-even swatting my arm away-that that option wasn't even on the radar.
"Ha!", I told her, "tell it to the Dean." And I left the room.
After I squared away the problem in my classroom, I went back to Sue's classroom. A strange sight greeted me. Sue was sitting at a desk with a shell-shocked expression on her face. Three students were sitting there talking to her-actually trying to soothe her. It had gone worse in her class.
She told me that when she called ten minutes, it turned into outright chaos - people talking, sharing answers. She immediately stopped the test and, she said, had to run around grabbing tests because nobody stopped.
"Who was it?" I asked.
"THE WHOLE DAMN CLASS!" Sue cried.
The 3 students had stayed behind to assuage the obviously shell-shocked Sue. So we all talked for awhile about why this happens here; why students who study twice as hard as American students and faced with an open-book exam, still feel the need to cheat! And I don't mean sneaking an answer here or there, it is large-scale, wholesale, across-the-board cheating.
(Sure, in America a few students will cheat. I know, I've caught 'em. But in China, it's only a few who DON'T cheat.)
Well, here is the way the 3 students explained this "cultural" difference to two shell-shocked Americans: If the students flunk a class they have to pay a 100Y fine and retake the class. If they flunk 4 classes they are thrown out. (I told them if they are caught blatantly cheating in America, they don't just flunk, they are thrown out of school). Then they said
much of it, that day, was because of the time limit (Fair enough: The cheating really didn't start until the limit was approaching. But it was an open-book exam, I pointed out.). Also they said, Chinese teachers just tend to look the other way. (To my Chinese readers who happen to be teachers: These are the students' words, not mine, accurately reported. I actually
wrote this part later that evening.) Whether this (the teachers' looking the other way) is because they understand the so-called pressure of the schools or whether they have just given up because it is so rampant wasn't clear. Then one of the students said this (see if you can follow this argument, I can't): "Because it is open-book, there is no reason why we
shouldn't be able to help our friend if they don't know the answer."
Apparently it's a cultural thing and in their eyes I was being anti-cultural by insisting on no cheating. Sue just shook her head in disbelief and said, "No wonder the Chinese always score so well internationally. It's a joint effort"
After securely locking up the exams in my apartment (I mean, who knows, right?) Sue and I headed out for a beer. I had promised her as much, in exchange for her proctoring services. But she insisted, I think, on Scotch. No problem. She deserved it.
"So?" I said, "now do you believe me?" I was recalling our conversation earlier when I had warned her and she had merely given me a bemused smile.
"I really thought you were over-exaggerating. I couldn't even IMAGINE it could be as bad as what I just saw." she said shaking her head.
So we talked about some strategies and she gave me some great suggestions. So I decided to take some new approaches. The cheating is so rampant, you can't catch everyone and tear up their exams. All but a few would get flunked. So the following term (and since then), as usual, I state my cheating policy in my first class. Then I tell them we will have short
quizzes every other week. This is to keep them up-to-date on their studies, rather than cramming and misplacing too much hope on the open book policy. During the each quiz, I have ZERO TOLERANCE. "If your eyes wander in the slightest, I tear up your quiz right there-no questions asked-no appeals heard or granted." (Plus they lose face when I tear it up in front of
everyone; face is very important among the Chinese). The accumulated quiz scores would count for only a very small portion of the final mark. Doing poorly (or getting 0's) in one or two won't affect your grade much (but it does alert me who to keep an eye on during the big exams, and I will place them at a desk isolated from the rest of the class). Well, the next
term it worked wonders. During the first quiz I held, I caught 6 the first week. Near the end of the term, weeks would go by when no one was cheating.
I assured those I caught that it was only a minor thing now-it would be major if it happened during a "real" exam. I cited a Chinese proverb: "Sometimes you have to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys." I killed a few chickens during those quizzes. But, a few 0's on minor quizzes and some face-losing scenarios and come exam time, everyone was marching like good
soldiers. The monkeys were scared. I felt confident I had effected a change on the test-taking culture of my students.
So finals came around again. I had decided to do away with the time limit to relieve the anxiety pressure that had created the mayhem the during the previous term's finals. I kept the open-book policy. (I'm a firm believer in that. Memorization just leads to cramming which students immediately forget as they leave the classroom after handing in their final. My
tests are more problem-solving oriented than fact oriented-so the student has to amalgamate the facts from the book/lectures and apply them to the questions posed. The latter is, in my opinion, the more important skill. For that, the book won't help). All of my strategies worked. Almost. In one class, I saw one student looking at another's paper. I grabbed both
exams. Since it was near the end of the test and it only been a small peak, I told them I would review both exams.
And in the other class, I ran across saw a guy looking intensely at the paper next to him. It was early on in the test. He immediately admitted it.
So while it still existed, it didn't even come close to what Sue and I experienced that first term. The warnings had sunken in. The "culture" had adjusted. At least in my classes.
So what was the denouement on these various matters?
The Dean backed me up on the girl I caught cheating the first term. But her punishment was decided within the administration and I never learned the result for sure. Probably a fine and having to retake the class. Anyway, that was more severe than merely allowing her to retake the test (a common punishment I am told).
As to the guy I caught looking at the girl's paper, I am a fair man believe it or not. After comparing both exams, I decided that he probably hadn't cheated. Their answers were sufficiently different on the various "tough" questions I throw into my tests, not to warrant a judgment of cheating. They abided by my decision without complaint that the other students
had more time to finish their exams. In any event, it didn't much matter. The scores were very different for each of them. The guy who I saw looking had the better score. So why would he want to try to cheat off someone with a poorer score. It's something that never ceases to amaze us teachers, but the students just don't believe us when we tell them: what makes the
person sitting next to you any more likely to have the correct answer than you? If you're not sure, chances are that neither are they. In other words, your guess is as good (if not better than) theirs. So why take the chance?
As to the guy who admitted i? Due to his refreshing honesty, I gave him a zero rather than bounce him and he was still able to pass the course (though barely).
I heard from my students that the Dean had gotten really gotten pissed off about cheating, probably because I made such a big deal about it, and perhaps because it's embarrassing to the Chinese teachers. In any event, he backed me up on every issue and for that I was thankful. Maybe it really IS a concern among the Chinese faculty.
An interesting footnote: as I left Jinzhou College, I asked for a letter of recommendation from the Dean and he wrote a very nice one. Since I was going to another Chinese college, I asked if he would mind writing me one in Chinese as well which he obligingly did. I later asked a friend to translate it for me and it basically was the same as the English one he
had written, but with this addition, written in Chinese, which was missing from the original: "During his time here, Chuck was very strict about student cheating." A compliment? Or a warning? I wasn't sure.
Last semester, I taught writing to 5 sections (at 30 students apiece) at Suzhou University. For their final exam - an essay exam - I was well-prepared. For each class, I prepared a singularly different essay question for each student in the class. Thus no two students in the class had the same question. It required me to prepare 30 different questions all of
approximately the same degree of difficulty. I then ran off five sets of these and administered the final exam. No problem. And no problems.
I can't say it went as easy during the term, though. I gave the students weekly journal-writing assignments and semi-monthly written exercises. On the written exercises I ran across occasional articles copied from other sources. I had two girls in two different classes, for example, turn in a really cute story about how some relative showed up on campus
unexpectedly on their birthday as they were walking out to go to class and the relative had a birthday cake for them. Late for class, they thanked the relative, put the cake in their empty dorm-room, and left for a long day of classes. When they returned much later in the day, all the roommates were there just finishing up the last of the cake.
The roommates told them, "Oh! it was her (indicating the shyest, loneliest girl in the dorm room) birthday and a secret admirer sent her a cake. Have a piece!" A really cute story, if I hadn't read the same basic story a day earlier. It was obviously copied from one of the innumerable English readers that are sold to English learners here which reprint (probably
without copyright) trite stories that have appeared in western books, newspapers and magazines. (Readers Digest® stories are favorites in these rags.)
Anyway, the details differed slightly: In one, it was her mother who had showed up at her door as she was leaving, and the student placed the cake on the shy girl's bed because it was closest to the door and she was late for class; in the other, the student was was outside her dorm when she encountered her aunt with the cake, and reached through the window of her
ground-floor room and placed it on the shy girl's bed because it was closest to the window and then hurried off to class.
Plagiarism it's called in the west, but the ancient Chinese tradition, readily admitted by all here, is that so-called "masters" works put in the public-domain (to use western legal jargon) are freely copyable with no attribution necessary. Perhaps that is because it is (was) assumed that the educated class here are presumed to know the source. (Perhaps, also,
that is half the reason (profit constituting the other half) why there is little moral compunction against copying, counterfeiting, bootlegging, and pirating computer software, music cassettes and CD's, Nike™ footware, American cigarettes, as well as China's own currency! Foreigners beware not to get stuck with counterfeit bills!)
Both girls stories ended with the same tug on the reader's heartstrings: The poor shy girl had few friends, and made up a story that it was her birthday today and she must have a secret boyfriend they don't know about, and given the poor girl's loneliness, the real birthday girl decided not to divulge the true story. That would make the shy girl "lose face" with
the other roommates. In China, "losing face" is, socially, the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese person. But equally strong, is the notion that YOU must not put those with whom you have a relationship (kindred, classmate, friend, or, in this case, dorm mate) in a position that THEY will lose face. So the birthday girls' maintained face by keeping silent in
the face (pun intended) of the obvious lie by their respective, shy roommates.
Apparently, the risk of losing face with their teacher by turning in plagiarized stories was non-existent. Whether that's because they thought he (I) wouldn't figure it out, or because plagiarism is "de rigueur" in the academic setting here I'm not sure. Whatever.... (as we say in the States). Let's call a spade a spade (a favorite idiom in my students' essays):
Copying, in it's multifarious forms, is entangled in the social fabric here: educational (cheating on exams), commercial (counterfeit goods), economic (counterfeit money, technology transfers); even, unfortunately, cultural (how many times must I hear the Theme Song from the Titanic before I lose the gag reflex?).
It is a damned shame. There are many, many talented people here. But they seem to lack the initiative to excel individually based on their abilities. The EDUCATIONAL system here encourages the student to sit passively in the classroom while an "esteemed" teacher sits at the head of the class reading aloud from a text book for 50 minutes while the students absorb
the words of the "master". Ask a question (and thus disrupt the concentration of the teacher-or worse, require him/her to THINK) and you face severe criticism (and "loss of face" with your classmates). Answer the teacher's question incorrectly and you face more severe criticism according to what my students tell me. I have a 20 minute lecture I now give during my
first class every semester where I try (usually unsuccessfully) to explain - nay break the mindset:
"I am not a Chinese teacher." I explain.
"Duh!" the students think.... and WOULD say if they knew THAT colloquial expression. To my face, they say, "Teacher Chuck, you are too serious about this. Chinese teachers are not so strict as you."
"Duh, I think to myself, "or else it wouldn't be so rampant here."
"Let me just say one thing," I explain in an attempt to put my viewpoint in a nice, neat, package they should be able to grasp, "for a western teacher, if you try....if you are active in class....if you participate....that is what matters. YOU DO NOT LOSE FACE WITH ME BY ANSWERING INCORRECTLY. YOU LOSE FACE WITH ME BY ACTING LIKE 'WORMS'!" So ingrained is their
training otherwise, that this fails to register on them until much later, so effective has the educational system here been in turning them into.....well, "worms". (Read on...I explain that euphemism a few paragraphs hence.)
In a nutshell, I explain that I do not/will not criticize them EVER for mistakes. We learn by making mistakes. I believe that firmly. You try. You fail. You learn. Michael Jordan (All Hail Mike!) said as much in that Nike® ad that showed him missing shots and losing games: "I have failed over and over again......Which is why I have succeeded," he said in the
voice-over for the commercial.
Truer words have rarely been spoken. And my students need to learn the first step in real learning: to try even at the risk of so-called failure. The effort to try is sorely lacking in the classrooms here. A teacher stands at the head of the class looking at a roomful of downturned heads; downturned not out of shame, but out of fear that the teacher might call on
them......and that they might answer wrong. They probably know the answer but lack any self-confidence to give it........and that, having answered incorrectly, they will have to face the loss of face (pun fully intended). A teacher who is more concerned with delivering content and with teaching students how to THINK and solve problems; rather than a teacher (of
which there are literally millions here) who merely requires students to parrot back set responses to memorized questions of minimal practical utility thus fulfilling his/her function as teacher/tool, will find this view (the downturned heads, the fear of participation, the cowardice) unbelievable. Well, foreign friend, come to China to teach and see for
yourself.
Students' like to claim "shyness" for their classroom behavior. That's what their Chinese-English teachers have approvingly told them to say in English: "Chinese students are "shy".
I prefer to use the word "cowardice". Shy is shy. And cowards are cowards. Shy people duck their eyes. Cowards duck their heads. In the Chinese classroom, the vast majority of students duck their heads when avoiding participation. Talk to any one student and he/she will strenuously tell you that it's the educational system and he/she is not like that, but in a
classroom full of students it's a different story. It's the "loss of face" factor. Until Chinese students learn to lose their stupid "face" in the classroom...only then will they gain true skills in English. And then, they won't have to resort to cheating to pass exams.
Whatever.
There is an "ancient Chinese proverb":
"Yi ge Zhongguoren shi long. San ge Zhonguoren shi chong"
"One Chinese person is a dragon. Three Chinese people become worms."
Beijing seems to have realized these problems and is pressing forward reforms in the education and teaching areas, particularly in the English area. (The Chinese curricula for schools from middle schools through college have only three required components: Chinese, Math, and English.) The problem is, policy must be implemented by those same English teachers with
lackluster (Brit: lacklustre) skills who prefer to stand at the front of the classroom droning on, locked into their lifetime appointments and local fiefdoms. China's educational system is perpetuating the worm mentality.
In other words, put a group of otherwise individually talented people together, and you end up with the lowest common denominator amongst them-everyone fearful to do anything which might result in losing face: A classroom full of worms-burying their noses in the book, drilling down into their seats to avoid being called upon, absorbing the offal from poorly
written (and edited) textbooks, monotonously rendered by bored and boring tenuremen, and excreting it all back in a forgotten trail of dung as they crawl inexorably toward a future for which they should be racing; a future which they should be better equipped to face; a future for which they could be the fishers instead of the bait.
China needs more dragons. The stock is there. As a recent (by Chinese historical standards) British author penned, in another context: "To be or not be, that's the question."
NOTE: It seems there is no end to this plagiarism plaque here in China. Since I penned this story, I have encountered additional cheating in my classes - and they do this knowing my STRONG FEELINGS on this situation. It is an institutional problem - the Chinese teachers (for the most part) overlook it; the students do it automatically. They graduate an become
teachers and the plague carries on down to the next generation of students. Check back here from time to time as I will continue to add stories about the rampant cheating here. If my Chinese readers think I am being overly critical or "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" (a favorite phrase here), well, tough shit! Fix the problem!
Chinese Teachers:
Please! Teach your students to do their own work. They learn nothing by copying from their classmates. And when they graduate and go to work in society, they are helpless and clueless. Perhaps in the past, that would be overlooked. But as China enters the 21st century and joins the WTO, these misfits will be hard-pressed to keep up.
Chinese Students,
Please! Learn to do your own work. Learn to have confidence in your own abilities and not the collective abilities of your classmates....which drags everyone in your class down to the lowest common denominator. When you graduate and get a job, your classmate isn't going to be sitting next to you in your office any longer to tell you what to do. Learn now how to
do your own work! It's the only way to learn the skills you will need to do well in the 21st century. Zhende!
The Jinzhou Electric power plant lies 20 kms outside the city. (That's the main pollution control device: built it downwind and far away from the city so the coal dust blows into the countryside). There's an entire small town here of about 10,000 people called Electric City (literally translated and no pun intended). Everyone who lives here works for or is in the
families of power plant employees.
I was invited to teach a few classes there because the plant is owned by a Hong Kong based company which was in the process of building a new power plant about 250 kms south of Jinzhou in the city of Tangshan (the city that was devastated by an earthquake in 1976 which killed some 280,000 people). The Tangshan plant will be a joint venture with an American power
company and some of the employees here in Jinzhou will be invited to work at the new plant. Because of that, the plant here had business and English training classes for the most promising engineers and operators and they invited me to teach a few classes.
I got along great with all the students in the class, who ranged in age from early 20's to mid-30's. We quickly became friends and often would play basketball, go out for dinner, play pool, or head to the disco.
THE POWER(LESS) PLANT
One day, after class, six of the students asked if I would stick around in Electric City and they would could cook me dinner. I said, sure and when we headed outside the classroom and over to the market, I said "I'll tell you what, you cook a couple of Chinese dishes and I'll cook a western dish."
"Great idea!" they exclaimed.
I decided I would whip up some spaghetti for them, albeit my Chinese version. Since they don't have olive oil, oregano, thyme or basil, I give it a Chinese twist with some cumin, star anise, and coriander. Handmade noodles are sold everywhere in China. You can walk down some streets in Jinzhou and see 5 or 10 guys standing in front of various restaurants
kneading, twisting, stretching, and slamming the dough onto a table to create, voila! noodles.
So we walked through the market and gathered what we needed - I, tomatoes, a red onion, some green and red peppers, the spices, and the noodles. 
AT THE MARKET
Typical veggies at a typical stand
at a typical market in a typical city.
photo Copyright © carla king, 1998
Suddenly, the power went out! Yes, that's right, the power went out. Not just in the market but in the in the whole town. This is the power plant! It's own city! This is Electric City! Suddenly, there was no electricity in Electric City. My friends, who of course all worked for the plant, merely shrugged that TIC (This Is China) shrug.
"What happened?" I joked with them, "The plant didn't pay the electric bill, so they shut themselves off for non-payment?" They chuckled.
Suddenly it dawned on us, here we are standing in the market with bags full of food and no electricity to cook it. Well, my friends, being Chinese, became incredibly embarrassed. A powerless power plant. And Theresa, the one who had masterminded this whole occasion was, I swear, close to tears. I realized she had planned this whole thing well in advance "AIYAHHH!!! This is the worst day of my life!" she kept moaning over and over again.
Well, I had an idea. Most of the tiny restaurants surrounding the power plant cook with merely a propane tank and a wok. No electricity needed. Why not ask one of them if we could use their kitchen to cook our food. The whole city was dark, so it wasn't as if the restaurants were going to be busy that evening. My idea worked - the the day was saved when we found
a small (filthy) restaurant which had a gas burner and they allowed us to cook our meal there by candlelight. A couple of Chinese dishes and Chuck's Chinese Spaghetti.
THE POWER PLANT GANG
(Front) Lynn, Chuck, Vivian, Theresa
(Back) Michael, Woody, Tiger, Vivian's brother, Mike
The spaghetti turned out great, or. so I thought. But the others? Nah. They didn't like it. Oh, they said they did, that it was "delicious", but I knew that they were just exercising Chinese politeness. They barely touched their bowls. (And I suspect maybe even a few even dumped it under the table-I don't know, it was too dark to tell.)
We all had a great time nonetheless. And the beer flowed. The other guys kept making jokes with poor Theresa (in Chinese) about her plans having gone awry, and candlelight dinners and other stuff. And Theresa kept moaning, "AIYAHHH!!!, This is the worst night of my life!"
Well, to be honest, despite the hilarity of the whole idea of a power plant losing power, we all had a most memorable and enjoyable evening. The camaraderie, the overcoming of adversity, and the spaghetti (OK, the latter maybe only for me) made it a memorable night.
"Hey, this is China," I told Theresa. "You know better than I that this stuff happens. It actually made things more interesting, right?"
She now realized that I didn't mind the electricity outage, that she shouldn't be embarrassed about it and her plans having gone awry, and that, in fact, the power outage had catalyzed a most interesting evening. Her mood changed from gloom to glee.
As I was getting into the cab to go back to downtown Jinzhou, she said, "I will remember this night forever!"
Her smile relit all of Electric City.
Okay, it's time to say goodbye to Jinzhou. The first six Chuck in Chinas have focused primarily on life in Jinzhou. In finishing up this issue, I find I still have more tales to tell about life in Jinzhou. Those will have to wait. I am now ensconced in Suzhou and I have many tales waiting to be told of life in Suzhou. So with the next issue of Chuck in China, I
will focus on Suzhou and Southeast China. The Chinese have a saying (which is echoed in The Travels of Marco Polo published circa 1295):
Shang You Tian Tang
Xia You Su Hang
"In Heaven there is Paradise
On Earth, there are Suzhou and Hangzhou"
Suzhou (and Hangzhou) at times, live up to their billing as will be described, at last, in the next few chapters of Chuck in China. But, I have to say that 7 months away from Jinzhou, and my heart is still there. The people of that city are the most warm-hearted and kindest people I have met in China. Indeed, anywhere. Many Jinzhou friends have stayed in close
contact with me since I left - some by letter, many by phone, a few by e-mail (which hasn't caught on much in Jinzhou).
I spent merely a year in Jinzhou and made many true and lasting friendships. And though Suzhou is a fascinating, beautiful city, the memories of my Jinzhou friends leave a lasting impression with me. So I have taken the liberty (or literary license) to amend that famous quote. Per Chuck in China:
Shang You Tian Tang
Xia You Su Hang
Jin You Tian Shi
"In Heaven there is Paradise
On Earth, there are Suzhou and Hangzhou
But the angels live in Jinzhou"
Chuck
To find out what happened next in Suzhou, you must read the next Chapter of Chuck in China. (Borrowing a common literary device from Chinese writers (eg. Cao Xue Qin of "Dream of the Red Mansions" fame.)
  
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