Old Woman Enjoying Shaanxi Opera

Old Woman Enjoying Shaanxi Opera
Originally uploaded by kevsunblush

Shaanxi Opera is a special form of grating Chinese music that the old people here are quite fond of. Every weekend and most weekdays in the main city square, you can find groups of old people playing traditional Chinese instruments. There's generally a man or woman singing traditional opera (if you've ever heard Beijing Opera, aka Peking Opera, you get the idea). The other day, I even spotted several musicians practicing in the outdoor dining area at McDonalds (I wish I had my camera that day).

I just uploaded a bunch of photos of people playing and enjoying Shaanxi Opera in the city square, in addition to shots of the Sports Meeting, our trip to Xi'an a couple weeks ago and other stuff to flickr. Check them out here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevsunblush/

A big-time apology

By Kevin

Friday afternoon, an unknown number popped up on the cell phone.

"This is the monitor from class 1," she began. "I want to apologize because several of us cheated on your examination yesterday, we want to ask you to forgive us."

"I am willing to forgive you, but I am still deciding what I will do." I said.

She passed the telephone to a classmate, who dove into a long run-on sentence that combined an apology with excuses about how the class is too difficult, but that they were wrong to do what they did. "Several of us cheated on your exam. Will you please forgive us? We have washed the desks in the class and would like to meet with you so we can talk about it together. Would you be willing to give us another examination?"

Unfortunately, our Chinese lesson was about to begin. "Unfortunately, I will be busy this afternoon, but we can meet another time. I am willing to forgive you, but I am still deciding what I will do."

I met with six representatives from the class a couple hours later. I wondered: did the man in the office who I asked about changing the classroom say something or did they come to this conclusion on their own? Maybe they heard from the class that took the exam right after they did. Maybe they just saw that I'd scratched out their answers on the desks.

When they came over, the students spent more than an hour apologizing and then giving me advice for how I can make their class better. Just what every teacher wants: a lecture from his students.

The class monitor explained that she called a meeting of her classmates that morning and every student except for one had signed a letter of apology admitting that they had cheated. The one student who didn't sign insisted that she did not cheat. Now, I don't think that this many actually cheated (not every desk had answers written upon it), but since China is a very collective culture, undoubtedly, some students decided to stand alongside their classmates, in hopes that I'd give everyone another chance.

Here is their apology:

"A Letter of Apology"

Our dear teacher Kevin:

We are your students in 07ET1. We are sorry for our performance in your examing class. we admitted that we had done wrong, and we bave already realized our stupid behaves. We were cheating not only our teacher but also ourselves. We have had twice exams for this lesson during the semester. What we want to say to you is that it's too difficult for us to learn this course well, in your class we fixed our mind to listen to you but still can catch a little information. The vocabulary in our lessons is too large. So it's difficult for us to understand and learn them by heart. We were anxious about the coming of the exam and even didn't take a rest at noon before the exam. In order to pass the exam, the majority of us cheated in it and the rest of us kept honest. So please forgive us this time and give us a chance to correct our fault by taking another exam. We promise we won't do the same stupid thing again, please pardon us!

We sincerely hope that you and your beautiful wife Ruth live a happy live in China and may your jobs fares well.

Thank you for reading our letter.

Department of foreign English,

07ET1

(each student signed their names)

I expressed my disappointment with them and told them they they need to learn from this experience. I told them that when they cheat, they are robbing themselves, cheapening their education and lying to their future employers, among others. What if their doctor had cheated on his exams? Maybe he wouldn't know how to diagnose them properly. People would die.

I also thanked the students for apologizing to me early rather than waiting until I brought the matter up. I told them that I appreciated their courage to ask for forgiveness, even if I doubted that they would have done so if they hadn't been caught. I told them that I would forgive them because I have been forgiven for much. I told them that they will be taking another, more difficult exam. Probably an essay-based exam. Their maximum possible score on the exam will also be reduced.

I'm still deciding exactly how I will lecture the rest of the class on the seriousness of their offense in a way that may help them to realize their need for a grace bigger than that I can give.

This is not how I wanted to mark Ruth's birthday.

Thankfully, in the evening, the team gathered to celebrate Ruth's day. We made pizzas and cake, played Settlers (Ruth won), and watched Ruth's favorite movie: "Benny & Joon."

The plot thickens

Thursday night, May 7
by Kevin

I just had the realization that my Tuesday class was in the same classroom where mass cheating going on. My joy that several of them seemed to do better on this exam has morphed into suspicion. This has also made my reaction to the class I caught more complicated: some of the desks may have had answers written upon them before Tuesday's exam, so some of Thursday's culprits may not be guilty. Grr.

Once a cheater, always a cheater?

by Kevin

Today my frustrations with my culture classes boiled over into full-on anger. Anger mixed with sorrow about my student's souls.

Today I caught almost an entire class -- 34 of 44 -- cheating on an exam.

But before I get into that, let me back up a day. During the exam I gave yesterday, I spotted one girl who was mysteriously looking back and forth between her paper and her desk.

"What could she be looking at?" I wondered as I walked towards her. She slyly shifted her paper to the side, covering the area her eyes had been examining. I made a mental note of her name and where she was sitting, so I could get a closer look at her desk after almost everyone had left the room. After all, maybe something else was going on.

Sure enough, maps of Australia and New Zealand, which is one part of what they were being tested on, had been faitlfully drawn onto the desk. Now, most of the time these sort of things go unnoticed, because Chinese students are notorious for writing all over their desks. There isn't a single desk in the class that doesn't have writing scrawled all over it.

"What are you looking at?" asked the one student who was left in class, after handing me her exam. "She wrote the answers on her desk," I said, shaking my head.

She pulled out the blasphemous phrase every Chinese student seems to know to use when something shocking has happened:

"Oh my God," she exclaimed in mock horror. "How terrible. What will you do?"

"I am still deciding."

"I think when someone cheats, they must be punished, yes?"

"Yes."

I continued looking at other desks and soon discovered that others had used the same tactics. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure who had been sitting in those desks, since many change seats each week.

Fast forward one day. Now, my cheat-dar is on high alert as I give the an exam to another class. I spot a handful of eyes that are following the same track as the girl did yesterday, dancing back and forth between papers and their desks. Briefly, I consider nailing them now, but suddenly I had a thought: "I'll make note of where everyone is seated and then come check their desks after the exam. I begin writing out a seating chart, noting each student's name as I walk by."

After they leave, I began making the rounds.

By now I'm fuming. I pull out a blue permanent marker and begin drawing lines through their answers on the desks, to shame them.

By the time I finished, only a handful of desks were left without blue marks.

And there was another class about to come into the same room to take the same exam. I hurried up to the department office and found another a room we could move to for the exam. "Is there a department policy on cheating?" I asked Mr. Wang, explaining what had happened. "No, there isn't."

As I waited in the original classroom, counting down the minutes to when the next exam would begin, I watched the students cramming for their exam, curious if they would realize that the teacher was onto them. Several hurried students came into class, sat in their seat and noticed that answers had been scratched out. As they pointed it out to their neighbors, I gave them a knowing nod. But not everyone caught on. One girl, oblivious, frantically scribbled out a few answers onto her desk.

"I discovered that most of the students in the last class had written answers for the test on their desks," I announced. "If it was you who did it, you should be ashamed because you may have just made another student fail." Several students ashamedly looked down, avoiding eye contact. A few nervously giggled. I continued: "So the first thing we are going to do today is move to another classroom. Please stand and follow me."

I followed the same tactic in the new room. But now most students were rightfully fearful of being caught. I drew a seating chart with each student's name and watched them like a cat waiting to pounce on a mouse leaving its hole. Again, after they left I checked their desks. This time I only found two cheaters: apparently, in the minute or so that I wrote instructions on the board, these brazen cheaters managed to scribble down a quick map. Unbelievable.

As Wes put it, "They don't see cheating as wrong, unless they get caught."

Again, I left the room angry. I saw a couple girls in the hallway. They smiled, nervously.

But now I have a dilemma: first of all, what should I do? Should I give them all the zero they've been promised for cheating on an exam or should I give them another chance? A big part of me says fail them. Unfortunately, it's not clear-cut exactly WHO cheated. Was it the first student sitting at the desk or had the student who would be in the room to take the exam second come in early and scribbled down the answers? There were a couple of desks with TWO maps of Australia drawn on them.

The justice-seeker says, "Just give them a zero." The merciful part says, "Make them take a new exam." Yet another part says, "Maybe they can just go to another classroom and fill out this small part of the exam again?" Wes had an interesting idea, considering that China is a shame-based culture: "Call each student who cheated to the front of the room and give them a choice: I draw a line on your forehead or I give you a zero." That sounds extreme, but I'm at a loss right now.

I know many of you who read this are teachers. What would you do if you potentially cheating?

I ache for their souls. Integrity and honesty have such a small part in their studies. If they're willing to cheat on something as small as this (really, in the grand scheme of things, my class matters very little to them), how can they be trusted in bigger things? I wonder how many of them already cheated on college entrance exams? How many will do it again with their TEM-4? How many will bribe someone to find a job? When they become teachers, will they go on to enable their students to simply follow in their footsteps?

So, yes, all that to say, right now I'm at a loss. Bad China day? Yes.

Sports Meet

By Ruth
Today and tomorrow the school is holding their annual sports meet. My students were asking what sports meets are like in America, but I don’t really think we have them, at least not at university. It could be like a super glorified version of field day, but I’ve never been to one of those so I’m not really sure.

My favorite part about the sports meet is that we have two days off of classes. The students like this aspect as well, but it’s not such a holiday for them since they still are required to attend the sports meet all day both days. The freshmen seemed pretty excited, since it is the first time. The older students were coming in to borrow books to read since they expect a lot of boredom.

Anyway, it sure seems like a big deal because students have been practicing for months. For the past week, we have been hearing loud music and orders issuing from the stadium across campus. Yesterday, the students had to practice in the pouring rain. Not so much for the sports part, more for the big performance. The Chinese do love their performances. Think of the Olympic opening ceremonies on a college level.

There was the parade of athletes and the required speeches, which we fortunately missed. Then there was a drum dance, hundreds of freshmen performing morning exercises, and hundreds of sophomores performing tai chi, with a few extra talented kung fu people thrown in.

The students were thrilled that we came. We only stayed for about an hour but came back in the afternoon to see Christina run in a relay. Everyone was hugely excited about the foreigner participating, whether they knew her or not. Even though the rest of us were just standing around taking pictures, we were still pretty popular. Several random students came up and nervously asked to take pictures with us, which they can now show to everyone they know when they talk about their close foreigner friends.

After Christina ran her part of the race and walked back across the field, the students went wild with cheers. Actually, when Kevin and I waved to our students as we left the field, they all started yelling and cheering too, and we hadn’t even done anything. It doesn’t take much to impress them. Sometimes it’s kind of fun to be celebrities.

Chinese + English = Chinglish

By Kevin

I apologize in advance for the shameless plug, but I just published a book titled "Chinese + English = Chinglish." You should check it out.

A couple years ago, a couple of Chinglish sign photos that I took were included in a book called "Found in Translation," which has gone on to sell more than 50,000 copies. While I thought the book was pretty good, I also thought to myself, "I can do better than that."

So this 80-page book contains more than 100 of the best depictions of Chinglish that I've managed to photograph in our three years in China. Most are prominent public signs and advertisements, but many others are packaging and clothing.

So far it's only available through online publisher www.blurb.com, but if anyone other than just family and friends show an interest, maybe wider distribution might be possible. Shipping is a bit pricy, but I discovered that if you enter this promo code: "hpfreeshipping" (without quotation marks, naturally) at checkout, shipping is free up to $10.

Oh yeah, I also made another blog about the book and Chinglish, which you are more than welcome to visit: here.

Chinese + Engl...

By by Kevin T. Felt

Book Preview

Up on the Heights

by Ruth

Yesterday our team was looking over a passage in the Psalms that says,

“He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, so I can go up on the heights.”

As we asked for insights into what we were reading, this was the sentence that stuck out to me. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. Rarely are we placed in the “perfect environment.” I guess really there isn’t even such a thing. So since we are living in an imperfect world, we have to undergo the necessary changes that allow us to function and even thrive in our environment.

Mountain goats are one of the few animals that can live in the heights because they are made for them. Sometimes we are transplanted out of our natural situation and put into a very different environment (say, moving to a weird, very different country on the other side of the world – just as a hypothetical example). And then perhaps we feel like big, clumsy donkeys trying to climb around on perilous cliffs.

Anyway, that’s how I feel sometimes. I think, “Am I really meant for this? This doesn’t seem like it’s me.” For one, I’m not a naturally adventurous person. I’ve always liked the idea of travel but find that the actual process seems more unpleasant each time I try it. And this life involves a lot of travel. I haven’t traveled in about two months and it already seems like eternity. I realized we spent a fourth of the year living out of suitcases, and that realization doesn’t excite me.

I am also such an introvert. When my students took personality tests last month, they all guessed that I was outgoing and talkative because that’s the role I often need to take on. We spend a lot of time around students – in the classroom, in office times, having them over to our apartment, doing activities together. I enjoy it most of the time, but sometimes (say when I’m spending hours with 20 people I don’t know), I get really tired of it. I find all the social stuff draining, yet it’s part of what we’re here for. Wouldn’t it be better if I loved to be around people all the time and just couldn’t get enough of it?

I stink at languages. Not just because I’m lazy and a bad student, though that’s certainly part of it. Languages don’t excite me; they make me want to crawl into a corner and hide. One huge obstacle between me and the possibility of staying in China long term is this prison camp called “Language School.” Dun-dun-dun! I’m glad I chose a country with one of the most difficult languages in the world.

Oh and let’s see. I like to have order and control. I like to know what is going on. I value aesthetics. I don't like lots of attention. I thrive under stability and routine. Which makes me wonder sometimes, “What in the world am I doing here?”

This is why the sentence caught my attention. It doesn’t say, “Good thing we’re deer so we can easily go up on the heights.” It’s says he makes our feet to be what they need to be. He doesn’t just leave us a donkey and give us a mountain climbing manual. He changes us to fit the situation. He makes us into who we need to be.

I like the way one version put it even better: “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights.” Hey look at that! I love security! The mountain goats go up on the mountain because they can be safe from their predators. Even though they are standing on a dangerous ledge, they are secure.

I still don’t like the idea of living in a place where I don’t belong. But it is encouraging to know that hypothetically, if it were ever to happen that I was transplanted into a weird and different country, maybe I could be made into what I needed to be.

Apartment People

by Ruth
Thanks to the economic slump, many of my friends (the non-China variety, anyway) seem to be buying houses this year. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get really jealous about that sometimes. I love houses. I went through this phase in middle school of wanting to be an architect. I borrowed the whole collection of house plan books from our local library and poured through them. I stocked up on graph paper and designed a bunch of my own houses. When I realized that architecture required a whole lot of math, that plan died really quickly, but I still like houses.

I know that I have it pretty good here. Our apartment is really nice and big. But an apartment is just not as cool as a house. I was reading part of Beverly Cleary's autobiography recently, and she said her mother told her not to trust people who lived in apartments. Something about those kind of people not being stable enough. Sure, it was the 1930’s, but I thought that was pretty funny. And possibly true. We don't even stay in one place long enough to successfully grow house plants.

Our apartment is only a few years old but it already has some interesting quirks. For example, last night a bird tried to push through the paper cup blocking the hole in the wall. It freaked me out a little at first because it reminded me of a certain bat episode when I was younger. Then I thought about how it was a little strange to have a paper cup forming part of my wall.

Over the past few months, the outer walls have become covered with dark spots where some kind of nails from the wall joints show through or maybe rusted through the plaster. They have gradually become darker until the walls now look like they have a pox. We asked the school if we could paint the walls but they said no. They do own the apartment, so I guess that is reasonable. I really miss being able to paint, though. Sometimes I just browse through sherwinwilliams.com enjoying all the different paint colors. Since we can’t paint, I was hoping to hang something up to cover part one of the diseased walls.

But today we discovered that while the inside walls of the apartment are indestructible concrete that destroys anything less than extra strength nails, the outer walls are flimsy plaster which crumble under the pressure of a nail. Instead of covering up part of the wall, we just ended up with a couple of caved in spots in the plaster.

With the coming of warm weather, we have had a lot more interactions with the kitchen drain, as well. It feels like interactions, anyway, with the drain speaking through a variety of different smells. There is the classic bad drain smell that wafts up whenever someone in one of the eight stories above us flushes the toilet. Then there is the rotten egg smell. The old garbage smell. The garden dirt smell. And the most original so far – the browning hamburger smell. That one was actually kind of nice. It made it seem like I was cooking. I don’t mind garden dirt either; it smells like wet dirt after a warm rain. I just don't think it fits very well in the kitchen.

There are many things I am thankful for, though. I still think our laundry porch is pretty cool, with the clothes racks that can be raised and lowered. The heated floors make a big difference in winter. And hot water in the kitchen sink makes washing dishes nicer. And the paper cup thing is a little funny. So long as the bird doesn't succeed in pushing it's way through. I should put something more durable in there, like a plastic water bottle.

And maybe some day I'll be one of those house people. I'll settle down and commit to a real houseplant. I'll settle down and live in one place for forever and ever or at least three years. That sounds nice.

Cheese

by Ruth

Last weekend we decided it was time for a cheese run. On our first semester trip to Metro (the supermarket in Xian which has import foods) we were shocked and dismayed to discover they no longer had the large 6 kilo cheddar cheese blocks we had bought in the fall. The small, overpriced bits we bought before were almost gone. The future of our meals depended on finding more cheese.

We say that Xian is an hour away, but of course it’s not that simple. Actually, there is a 10 minute walk to the bus station, 15-20 minutes waiting around for a Xian bus (they leave whenever they are full), and 1 hour on the bus. Once we get into Xian, we pick up a city bus that takes us from the north-east corner of town to the far south where Metro is. We usually stop in the middle of the city for some Pizza Hut or Subway, such a nice treat, and sometimes stop again before Metro to stock up on some dvds. With no stops, it’s about an hour bus ride. With stops, well, it’s usually mid-afternoon when we arrive at Metro. Metro has two whole rows of imported goods. We stock up on the essentials like cereal, brownie mix, spaghetti noodles, and salsa. But when we headed over to the cheese section, there was still no cheddar. Just miniscule packets of Monterrey Jack, enough to last half a week. Fortunately, we had a plan B.

We had a business card for some kind of food wholesale place Christina knew about. Wes called and found out they had the cheddar we were looking for. The only problem was, we didn’t really know where it was. Christina had been there once and had a very vague memory of what it was like. We loaded up our purchases into backpacks and shopping bags and set out to find a taxi.

Metro is a horrible place for getting taxis. There are plenty of them – they just won’t stop for you. We spent 10 minutes flagging down and being rejected by dozens of taxis before crossing the road to spend another 10 minutes flagging down and being rejected by taxis from the other direction. Finally, we found someone who was actually serious about this taxi-driving business and agreed to take us.

The business card had an address but addresses aren’t always marked very well. Once we were on the right road, we all looked for any building numbers we could find. We finally found the right number, but it looked like a school gate, not a warehouse. The taxi driver kept on going for another block and a half before we finally convinced him we wanted to stop. We piled out and hiked back down the road, stopping several times to ask an old lady who couldn’t help us at all but was still very friendly.

When we got back to the right address, Wes peered inside the gate to ask the guard if we were in the right place. Strangely enough, we were. We walked along a small road lined with trees and aging apartment buildings. After turning several corners, the street noise receded. The air was quiet and filled with dandelion-type wisps that floated in and out of shadows. A cat sat on top of a brick wall in the sun, watching as we passed by. Colorful blankets were airing clothes lines. We looped our way around several buildings, past one or two people and five or six cats. This sure didn’t seem like the area for a wholesale warehouse, but the man we asked told us to keep going around one more corner. We turned the corner and reached a dead end.

On the right, an old red door, probably ten or twelve feet high, was cracked open. Christina peered inside to an empty, shaded courtyard. When Wes called out, a woman appeared at the doorway asking if we were the ones who had called. She led us inside, where we piled all our bags onto old, umbrella-covered restaurant style tables. I didn’t mind leaving it there – clearly there was no one around to steal it.

The owners of this out of the way place led us through several small store rooms filled with boxes of imported goods. We looked through boxes of pasta, large containers of spices, and huge cans of jalapeños. I was excited to find cream of mushroom soup – and I don’t even like mushrooms. But I am realizing this year how many recipes use cream soups and have been missing them. We went into a freezer room and found tortillas. Finally, we went into the fridge room. As promised, they had a number of large blocks of cheddar cheese, and for not a bad price – $4-5 per kilo.

We already had backpacks and bags full of items, but we pulled out new bags and added our purchases. It was quite a useful little back-alley shopping place. It will come in handy the next time we need cheese. If we can ever find it again.

It gets worse

Still grading exams. I didn't expect this, but they managed to get worse. On one of the first quizzes I gave them, it seemed that the average class grade went up as the week went along, so I made multiple versions of exams to discourage sharing of info with friends from other classes. This time I just made A and B versions of two exams: 1A and 1B for Tuesday and Wednesday classes (only difference is the questions are in a different order or multiple choice answers are mixed up, so if they decide to peek at their neighbor's exam, it won't help) and a 2A and 2B version for the two Thursday classes.

I expected that the Tuesday group might have slightly higher scores. I was wrong.

Here's the rundown
o As
1 B
1 C
6 Ds
34 Fs (80% of the class)

8 solid Fs (50-59%)
14 Gs (40-49%)
10 Hs (30-39%)
2 Is (20-29%)

Maybe the next exam should be open book?