teaching in Chonging: stuff that's not so great but you should know in case you're thinking about doing it

I love being in China. There's so much going on here that makes me happy I'm here. But there's plenty to gripe about as a foreigner. To me, the problems seem minor and they don't get to me much, but I imagine that other people coming to China would feel differently. Several volunteers have left already for various reasons. Almost all of them were placed in my area. I'm helping a friend of mine in the US get a job at my school teaching English. I decided to give her plenty of warning about the crappy conditions here so she could make a more informed decision. I figured I'd copy and paste it here to help anyone coming to China or thinking of coming to China. This mostly applies to my experience in Chongqing. Other areas can be quite different. I've tried to be as objective. But in fact I've probably erred on the side of exaggeration rather than understatement. If you think you can overcome all the obstacles I've mentioned here, then you're going to do just fine in China.

I didn't feel like editing this, so you're going to get it in IM format.

It's really so easy to get a teaching job in China. So many schools are hiring. My school is so desperate for foreign teachers, they'll hire anyone who can speak English. The last guy they hired was an Australian with a lisp. I can't even understand what he's saying. I wonder how his students are doing.

my school is super frustrating, so you know. you can't get anything done
and you're going to be commuting to the new campus almost every day, which is an hour and a half away
and you'll probably stay in the hotel on campus there
and it's really not that bad, but it's just inconvenient
you aren't going to be teaching english majors, because me and my sitemate do that
so the students you get are not going to be that great, but that depends on if you can get their attention and make class interesting for them
there's a bus that goes out to the new campus
teachers ride free
and yeah, you'll have me for a resource. i can help you with lesson planning
hell, you can use my lesson plans
the department you'll be working for is notoriously bad at communicating with you. sometimes you won't know who you're going to teach until you get to the classroom. you won't know your schedule until you start teaching either
Chinese people in general do not plan ahead. at all
and that's frustrating because you can't make plans
you're going to be making more money than you'll know what to do with though, but when you convert it to dollars, it's not enough to save
Where we live, we have super easy access to anywhere in the city because of the metro that just opened just outside my apartment, but you'll be spending several weekdays on the new campus
the new campus is in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing to do around there. on the other hand, it gives you a chance to really get to know the students there.
i'll be spending at least 2 days a week there and spending the night
and i'll probably be doing stuff with students
it would be great if we could work together on some projects
Chongqing city people are rude, pushy, and kinda gross
it won't get to you at first
but after a while it might
you'll be stared at a lot and people will disrespectfully "hello" you. you'll be walking down the street and people will yell "hello!"
if you can't speak any chinese, it will be kind of difficult to get around and do stuff. i'll help you with that, but you should try to learn some basic stuff. you'll probably want to get a tutor
food here is extremely oily. you might gain some weight
but there's not a lot of meat
the air in chongqing is so polluted that you won't see the sun for weeks
in the summer when you get here, it'll be around 100 F almost every day
it rains a lot
except there's not that much showering, just this miserable drizzle for days on end
the winter is worse. air quality is even worse in the winter and the drizzle goes from being uncomfortable to being cold and uncomfortable
also, even when you learn some chinese, it might not help you that much because in chongqing they speak a chongqing dialect that makes no sense to people who speak mandarin
everybody will watch you and know what you're doing all the time because you're white and your hair isn't black or dark brown
that's about all i can think of...
really though, these problems are pretty minor. i think if anything really bothers you it will be the work related stuff
the school is difficult to deal with, but honestly, they really don't care what you do in the classroom
as long as you show up to class and teach English, however you want to do that, you're practically untouchable. job security.
they are so desperate for english teachers
and not even good ones. They have to fulfill a quota given to them by the government
anyway, i really wanted you to know the bad stuff so you can make a good decision. several people in peace corps have left. all of them have been volunteers placed in my area.
but being here is a great opportunity. i've learned a ton about china. chongqing especially is at the forefront of development in china. more growth is happening here than anywhere else in the country and it's really interesting to see the effects of it

Hainan and Chinese New Year

January 14, I landed in Haikou, the capital of Hainan in the north, and my host mom met me at the airport. She rented a car for the trip and had her friend come with us everywhere. Her friend, Li Song, is a tour guide who lives in Haikou. We stayed at his apartment for the first night. He has a wife and a son, but i didn't see them. Their apartment has this huge portrait of his wife in the living room. Haikou was kind of chilly and cloudy and dreary, but the south of the island was completely different: really warm and sunny. We drove a lot and saw a few tourist sights along the way, but I was mostly content just riding in the car looking at the scenery. Mountains and palm trees everywhere. There are so many coconuts in Hainan it's preposterous. Everything is coconut flavored. We had some seafood, but it actually wasn't that good. I got sick from something and I didn't feel much like eating most of the time we were in Hainan. It's really a lot like Thailand: the climate, the people, some of the food (except not as good), the culture, so it felt very familiar.
     We stayed at another of my host mom's friends' place and I took pictures of her adorable twins. She sort of commissioned me to take them for her. I think they turned out alright. We continued on to the south the next day. Met up with Li Song's wife, who works at this ridiculously lavish golf resort for super rich people. Li Song's wife is gorgeous. We spent the night at a hotel nearby and I didn't sleep much because I was pretty sick. I couldn't keep water in me and I was getting pretty dehydrated. The next couple days I felt dizzy on and off, really tired, really sensitive to temperature changes, and I had no appetite. We finally got to Sanya, the city in the very south of the island, and stayed in a hotel there for the last 3 days. This is where we saw the most things. Since Li Song is a tour guide and my host mom borrowed her friend's tour guide ID badge, we got into a lot of tourist sites for free. The sights were pretty cool, but I've never been much of a tourist honestly. It always feels so gimmicky, and Sanya was practically built to create a source of revenue from tourism. And it shows. Everything felt so gaudy. I really like to get immersed in the culture of the everyday people of places I visit. To see how ordinary people live, what they do, what they eat. I got to see a little of that, but not a whole lot. It was still pretty awesome to be there though. It reminded me of how diverse China is.
     It was nice to see my host mom again and to practice my Chinese. She paid for everything too, which I protested against. It was a lot of money and I felt pretty guilty about it. She insisted though and wouldn't take my money. I lucked out with my host family. They're in their 30s. They're pretty modern and laid back. They like to take me places. My host "dad" also loves photography, so he takes me on photo trips and we share our photos and tips and tricks. A lot of other volunteers weren't so lucky with their host families. The only thing that sucks is that I don't get much time to myself when I'm with them. It's just a constant barrage of attention. While I was in Hainan, I started to feel that again. My host mom pays way too much attention to me and by the end of the trip I was craving some time alone.
    We flew to Chengdu on the 20th and celebrated Chinese New Year. All four of my host family's parents came to the apartment and spent the whole day there. We ate two big meals and they played majiang literally all day. I played for a while, but I soon had to do something else. It kind of blows my mind how old chinese people can just sit and play majiang for 6 hours at a time and not get tired of it. That night, as the hour approached midnight, there were more and more fireworks exploding all over the city. People buy fireworks from street vendors and set them off wherever they can. I went out on the balcony and was surrounded by explosions. Fireworks were hitting the sides of buildings only a few yards away in every direction. And they didn't stop after new years. Every night there were fireworks all over the place.
     Over the next few days, we went to visit other relatives and spent entire days sitting and playing, or watching old people play, majiang. Other than that, I mostly sat in my room reading, editing and uploading photos, and writing. My host dad's mother taught me how to make jiaozi. She is super sweet and sometimes reminds me of my own Chinese grandmother. We made tons of jiaozi and ate a lot of it. By the time I left for IST, I was sick of jiaozi.

January

oy... Sometimes I want to make an update, but thinking about how much has happened since my last posts overwhelms me enough to dissuade me from doing so.

Summary:

- Went to Hainan with my host family
- Spent Chinese New Year with my host family in Chengdu
- In Service Training for 2 weeks in Chengdu

Chonx

as awesome as it is being in Chongqing, I'm not quite penetrating into the language and culture as much as I'd like to be. Chongqing is one of the biggest cities in the world. It's modernized and westernized. As such, it's almost indistinguishable from any other big city in the west or east, jettisoning traditional culture to adopt a universal metropolitan one.

Part of it is urban culture, and part of it is my own debilitating shyness, but it's difficult striking up conversations with the local fauna. They're about what you'd expect from city folk: busy, pushy, disinterested, and completely disenchanted by the novelty of the presence of foreigners. Of course, it's not that I expect some special treatment because I'm American, but it makes things a bit more difficult to get to know people.

My students are also at such a high English proficiency level that I sometimes wonder what I really have to offer them. I provide them with an environment in which they can practice conversation. But in order for them to really learn something new, I feel they would need a real professional TEFL instrutor.

As a result, i feel caught in this kind of no man's land. I'm neither contributing a great service nor being immersed in the culture. I'm somewhat of a curiosity, but largely left alone.

I may have mentioned before that I'm considering extending already (and I'm not even a quarter through my 2 years) and spending a year in a more rural site like in Gansu. The way things are going, it just doesn't seem like I'll experience as much as I want to experience during the 2 years I'm in Chongqing. I don't know if I'll really get another chance to do something like that unless I do it with Peace Corps.

semester ending, dropping tourism english, chinese progress, martial arts, gym, tasty food, poop, iPod, weekends

The semester is in its last death throes. This week I'll be giving the exam to the Tourism English students, next week Oral English for English as a second major, and 2 weeks later for Oral English for the freshmen.

I feel burnt out. Commuting is a pain, trying to think of stuff to teach the Tourism English students who meet twice a week for 2 semesters is ridiculous. I asked the Humanities department to drop Tourism from my schedule next semester. It's still not clear if they're going to do it, but apparently someone approached the chinese woman who teaches the other section of Tourism English students. She told her class one day that she might be taking over my class. A few of my more motivated students were observing her class at the time. Crystal, my best student in both Oral English and Tourism, texted me "I heard you're abandoning us??" She had me meet her to talk about it. She was pretty upset, but I explained my schedule and that I just don't think I can keep it up for another semester.

That conversation with her had an effect on me. My mind was set on dropping the class, but the students apparently like me a lot, even though I can't get them engaged like i can with the Oral English students. They stare at me with glazed eyes. I know that if I drop the class, the 25 students in Ms. Leeta's class will become 50, and those students won't have much chance to speak out. On the other hand, I think they'll learn more. Leeta knows their English levels and she knows tourism. She'll be able to teach them vocabulary they can use... I mostly just treat the class as an oral English class. In the end, I will drop it if they let me. I feel a little bad about it, but I don't think it's worth being stressed out at the end of my week and missing out on things I've been wanting to get involved in here.

There are two other Americans who teach here besides my sitemate and me. They are both pretty strange. Honestly, i try to stay away from them. I want to spend more time with Chinese people. I hardly speak much Chinese as it is: everyone here knows enough English that they would rather talk with me in English than listen to me fumble around trying to get my ideas across in their language.

I had hoped that i would be better with my Chinese than I am by now.

I started taking intermediate Chinese classes with the international students who are Chinese majors (they're all from Kazakhstan), but I can't keep up with the class. I don't have time to do the homework, the class meets 4 days a week for 2 hours and i have to miss one of them to go to the new campus to teach, the textbook recently switched to being exclusively in hanzi. It takes some time for me to translate it. Next semester, I will probably join the second semester of the beginners.

I still haven't found a kung fu school. No one seems to be able to help me. Whenever I ask someone, they laugh. When they realize I'm being serious, they say "oh, there has to be a lot of schools around here." And when I ask where specifically, no one knows and no one finds out. The internet isn't any help on the issue either.

On the other hand, I did find a Taekwondo school (it seems to be far more popular in China than kung fu now ironically). I want to learn a Chinese martial art, and I'm already a black belt in TKD. But if this is all there is, I'll do it. I might start that next semester.

I've been going to this gym across the street for students. It's pretty dingy and unremarkable, but the most important things are there: some adjustable free weights, barbells, and benches. A couple students in my Oral English class found out I go there and they meet me there twice a week. Some of the other guys like to practice their English with me when I'm there. Someone always puts on Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, and Lady Gaga on the speakers. I find it hilarious.

I've been eating a lot more lately since i started going to the gym. I think I'm gaining wait. I feel fatter. It's probably because of all the noodles and oil. I usually eat at the cafeteria because it's super cheap, but the hours are all weird. When it's closed, I go across the street to the Xinjiang restaurants. They're little holes in the wall run by Uyghurs. I really love Xinjiang food. I have to go there one of these days. The food is much less oily than the local food. It's very simple: noodles/rice, sauce, meat, vegetables, spices. Potatoes, mutton, beef, bell peppers, onions, carrots. All the noodles are made by hand right there in front of you before they're put in your dish. The best part is, they have picture menues because the fare is so different from local food that the locals aren't sure what the dishes are called.

EDIT: I was wrong. They're actually Lanzhou restaurants, not Xinjiang. Lanzhou is the capital of Gansu province, which shares a border with Xinjiang and also contains a large Muslim population.

Not that I don't love the local food. I love wai po cai (pickled chopped vegetables), hot pot, xiao bai (super tender slices of fatty pork belly over a bed of wai po cai), the noodles (xiao mian, za jiang mian), jiaozi, chao shou (wanton), anything with pumpkin, anything with sweet potatoes... The only problem is that a lot of these foods have so much oil that they wreak havoc on my intestines... I have to plan accordingly if I'm going to eat hot pot and make sure I can get to a toilet within a few hours after eating it. In Chongqing and Sichuan, "la duzi" (loose bowels, just short of diarrhea), isn't a term that people find inappropriate or embarrassing. It's a fairly regular affliction like catching a cold. "where's so and so?" "oh, he has la duzi" "oh yeah, i had that yesterday." "me too, i get it all the time." and i'm like "then why does everyone use so much damn oil??"

I finally got an iPod touch. It revolutionized everything. I can go down the street, go to the supermarket, go to the bus station and actually understand what's written using Pleco. I'm learning a lot of new characters every day. It's still not as good at translating phrases and sentences as Google translate, but if I can get wifi, i can use Google as well.

Every weekend or so I meet with Brianne and/or Imogen, the British girl who also teaches at Brianne's school. I feel very fortunate that those two are closest to me. They're great peoples.

I had hoped that I would do more with my weekends. I thought I would travel and see more things. I'm not sure why I don't. I'm terrible at making plans. Part of it is that I'm lazy and/or I'm just ready to sit and vege out after my week. It's not that I don't do stuff. I always end up doing something with people, but I just don't feel like I'm experiencing as much as I can.

Hopefully next semester will be better. Without tourism english, I've gained a good full day or two of free time in my week. In fact, without tourism, I'll only have to prepare one lesson per week (and then teach it 6 times). That's a good deal.

"Joys and Challenges"

For an essay I had to write for my Program Manager who is coming to visit my site. I edited this down a lot before I sent it, but I figured I'd keep the original for this blog.

Joys and Challenges

I have been very happy to be working in China. For many years I’ve been wanting to come here and I’m glad that Peace Corps has given me the opportunity. It has been exciting learning about Chinese culture and learning about the daily lives and conditions of regular people in Chongqing. Many preconceptions I had have been shattered and some confirmed. The students I have met have impressed me with their enthusiasm and determination to learn and succeed in their studies and careers. With China developing at such an incredible pace, I have gotten the feeling that all the students that I meet everyday will have great futures. Jiaotong University specializes in engineering and urban development, and I feel that most of these students will go on to join as well as create their own companies that will build bridges, roads, buildings, ships, and trains, transforming the landscape of China. In America, I’m afraid I can’t say the same for recent graduates because of the economic recession. For the last few years, I’ve watched so many friends, as well as myself, struggle to find employment after graduating, so these students give me a lot of hope.

 The challenges I’ve faced in Chongqing have been mostly occupational. Having never taught before, it has been difficult getting the hang of teaching. It’s a constant process of trial and error. The students are very good, and I feel bad that I haven’t been able to do more for them yet. My lesson plans aren’t as good as they could be. The school has given me a difficult schedule. I was able to handle it pretty well before the freshmen started. Once I started commuting to the new campus to teach freshmen, I had much less time to prepare lessons. I had planned to begin taking Chinese classes and martial arts classes by now, but I’ve been stressed out. Hopefully next semester I will have a more manageable schedule.

The commute sometimes takes an hour and a half. Almost 6 hours of my week go to commuting at inconvenient times on top of teaching 16 hours and lesson planning. The bus schedule to the new campus is a little weird. When I get to campus, I have to wait for an hour and a half before class starts, and after class I have to wait for the bus to leave. Meanwhile the students are in class, so I can’t meet with them.

 There have been problems on the new campus. The keys to the classrooms are kept at a desk in a building that is a 10 minute walk from the building I teach in. There is only a 10 minute break between classes. I start some classes 20-30 minutes late because I have to shut down the computers and the power and close up the computer cabinets and doors, then walk to the other building to return the key, fill out a form, and sign for keys for my next class, then walk back to the same building to a classroom just down the hall from my previous class. I’m not allowed to have more than one key at a time because other teachers teach in those classrooms. This has especially angered me because it is not fair to the students that a large part of class time is wasted.

I have been trying to build a better relationship with the dean of the English department. I feel that he has been reluctant to address my concerns. I often feel that I am associated with every other foreign teacher. I have tried to convey the idea that I am not like every other paid teacher. My position goes beyond just teaching, and I want to connect with the community and help with other projects. I have asked the dean to lessen my course load for next semester, but he says I can’t drop any classes on the new campus. They don’t have enough English teachers and he isn’t in charge of hiring more.

 I’ve tried talking to other English teachers at the school, but they don’t seem to ever be available. On one occasion I talked to one teacher who told me how difficult her course load is. All the teachers are overloaded. They say their lesson plans have suffered because they are just too busy. One of the teachers I talked to said she wouldn’t have worked here if she knew it would be like this, but she has a contract that she has to fulfill. All of these teachers are commuting to the new campus. They get paid extra to commute, but I do not. I have felt a little frustrated because I feel like they are taking advantage of this fact.

 Another minor difficulty I’ve had since getting here is that hardly anyone speaks Putonghua unless I ask them to. I can’t understand Chongqinghua and even the Chongqing accent in Mandarin is hard to understand. People can understand when I speak Putonghua, but I can’t understand them. Though I haven’t started with my Chinese learning, I’ve resolved to focus more on reading and writing. I’m still excited to learn more Chinese.

 Besides this, I have no complaints. My living conditions are great, and I enjoy a lot of conveniences I wasn’t expecting. I’m slowly working through the difficulties with the school and I think next semester will be better.

Coworkers

I haven’t had much interaction with my coworkers. As I said before, they are overloaded with classes. The dean also teaches, and he says that he feels sorry for his students because he spends so much time on departmental management that his lesson planning suffers. I’ve asked him about how the other teachers are doing, and he said they are all tired from their workloads. All the teachers I have talked to have expressed frustration with the new campus situation. No one seems happy about it. I heard that the government has required that many universities expand by building new campuses, so the decision is not entirely the school’s to make. I have passed by a few English classes, and I see that teachers often spend the whole class sitting at the desk in front of class lecturing through a headset while reading off of their notes or the screen. In some classrooms, all the students have headsets and monitors at their desks, and they sit and listen in silence. Some teachers are more engaging and have some speaking activities for their students, but the classes are almost entirely in Chinese. The English department dean mentioned that he wished to hire more teachers, but it wasn’t up to him. The school decides how many teachers to hire. I went to a meeting once where they showed videos from different companies competing to build the community for teachers at the new campus. The teachers voted on which company they wanted to build the project. I suppose this is an indication of the decision making process, but I assume the administration has the final say.

End of Training, Seeing Biden, Swearing In with Ambassador Locke, Moving to Chongqing

Good lord. I haven't updated this in a month and there's way too much that has happened to try to write about here. I'll give some highlights The last few weeks of pre service training were super busy. We went to Sichuan University to see Vice President Biden give a speech. He shook hands with a few volunteers. The next day we were sworn in by Ambassador Gary Locke. I got to shake his hand. We got group pictures, he gave a speech, and he talked to the press. Later we were all on national TV. I saw myself on TV, which was pretty cool. We all moved out of our host family houses and went to an extremely nice hotel for a few days before leaving for our permanent sites. It was nice to have everyone together one last time. We had some final training sessions. Usually this is when volunteers have their swearing in ceremony, but we had ours early. Because of Biden's visit and coordinating with the Ambassador, the schedule got shifted around. It worked out well to have it it like that. It seemed like it would have been more stressful if we had swearing in at the hotel. Then we all went off to our sites. I was lucky, a guy from my Wai Ban office at Jiaotong University came to pick me up with a driver. Having to take the train would not have been fun. Peace Corps gave me a water distiller and an air purifier in these huge boxes. Combined with my other luggage, it would have been impossible to carry around myself. I arrived in Chongqing at my apartment after a 4 hour car ride. I met my site mate, who was really helpful. I had a good week before my classes started. It was nice of them not to make me teach as soon as I got there. I spent the time setting up my apartment, meeting people, hanging out with some volunteers in Chongqing, exploring a bit.