Hello Everyone!
Welcome to my new fall semester! At the moment, I have two level 1 oral classes, two level 2, and one level 3. I may be getting a third level 1 (all my level 1 freshmen start in October after the holiday), but we will see what happens. I love first semester freshmen because they’re so eager to learn and raring to go! Many of them also have never seen a westerner before, so they’re really curious about me and the US and are willing to work for a story. I also have a movie class full of lawyers (I’ve shown Big Fish and Dead Poet’s Society already. I plan to show the Maltese Falcon, All the President’s Men, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and possibly The Natural in the future. I’m not sure what else; other options include The Red Violin and The Untouchables and World Trade Center). Then there are the two sections of Introduction to Western Culture, where I’m spending WAY too much time in ancient Greece. I hope to end that this week and hop on over to Rome after the break, then immediately into Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance Europe after the midterm exam. I’m actually enjoying these last two classes very much. I’m putting a lot of work into it, but I get a happy buzz from it, which is great.
I’m back to swimming, although not as much as I’d like, having so many 4-5:35pm classes (swim time is from 3:30-7:15). I have to eat dinner really early, and get over my exhaustion enough to actually cross the street and jump in for my hour after class. I’ve been really exhausted lately and can’t wait for the week-long vacation in October. I’ve also been quite crabby lately also, which makes me more tired. I plan to add more walking during the October break, as it is also harder to get that done with a fuller schedule than I had last semester. In addition, the pool is much more crowded this semester than last, all the way till 7:00. Each lane has between four and six people sharing the space. Dave next door found nose plugs for me so that I don’t have to drink the wake of other swimmers and be forced to use the spittoons (aka “phlegm tins”) that are conveniently hung under the diving boards (blech).
After a bit of trial and error, I have finally found someone to help me to focus my Chinese lessons. Lin was Robyn upstairs’ tutor. She’s learning to be a Chinese teacher for foreigners, and I’m giving her some practical experience. She’s actually good enough to make me want to study on my own and work to get ahead of the lessons. She’s also good at explaining things to me, which is nice. I feel more confident in my ability to master the basics at this point, especially since I have discovered that I am considered an “advanced beginner”. I’ve whipped through the 15 book lessons in 3 weeks. Others on campus are also using this book, paying 4500RMB for a class and taking all semester to get through it. My reading and writing, while only partly functional due to a restricted vocabulary, has improved greatly, as has my listening skill. My speaking, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired. I’m not too worried, though. I have very little problem with tones, which are the most difficult part for most people. It’s the creation of my own sentences that gets me, which is the same problem I had with French, if I recall correctly.
I am also tutoring a girl for college interviews. Normally I like to keep my weekends sacred, but she’s a friend of Alice, and it’s only one hour early Sunday morning, so it’s okay. An extra 100RMB a week! So life in general is busy.
Someone was asking me about the milk issue the other day. I want to tell a farce…I mean, story…that has, on the surface, nothing to do with milk, but beneath the surface has everything to do with it.
Jens upstairs and I were asked to record some dialogues for a textbook company from Beijing. We were told that it would only take a day, and that we would be paid 2 RMB for each recording. Not much, but hey, we decided that for such a little thing it wasn’t a problem. We arrive at the “studio” in the building next door to our dorm. We’re in a regular office with a single microphone for two people. We are handed the script, which is hugely thick. We are then told that we are also expected to record these really long passages about international business and the list of new words as well. Looking at the script, Jens and I realize that it’s very poorly done and needs a huge amount of proofreading correction. So we begin to do the corrections. After three hours, we’ve corrected three of the nineteen units and recorded two of the dialogues. The dialogues were tough, because the microphone was not only substandard in quality (read: muffled noises and a lot of “pppppp” sounds), but we had lovely moments reminiscent of “Singin’ in the Rain” (you remember the scene when the mike is hidden in the woman’s dress, and whenever she moves her head the sound is either too amplified or cut out completely? Yeah.), which required numerous tries to correct. Then there’s the huge fight between the Chinese girl and Jens over the existence of “Scottish brandy”, and her insistence that we pretend that it exists. I also fight with the Chinese girl over incorrect grammatical structure, which she insists is correct because “In Chinese we have this pattern”. In addition, she makes us do the conversations with more than one man or woman by insisting that we can change our voice to suit the recording (which of course does not work and makes me want to use my Betty Boop voice for everything. Jens’ voice has a very distinctive German accent, and it’s obvious that it’s him for both voices, especially when they follow one another). As for my own voice, the publisher in Beijing liked it, saying that it was not a “Typical American Accent”. I’m still not sure if I should be complimented or offended by this. I wonder if I can buy a Typical American Accent off the Internet (and what IS a “typical American accent”, anyway???)? By the end of the day, it’s obvious that we’re expected to do more than we bargained for, and we decided not to finish if we couldn’t have two better quality microphones and payment for time and correction of the text in addition to the recordings. The Chinese girl told us that it was no problem if the text had mistakes, that it could be sold anyway. She spent the next two days trying to get us to come back, without mention of more payment (she ignored us when we asked). We also found out that the people in charge of this whole thing treated Ying and Anna Ma (the building manager downstairs) very rudely and unkindly from the very beginning, before Jens and I were even involved.
So what does this have to do with milk? As I told the Chinese girl: integrity and excellence. These are things that are at least given lip service in the US and other western countries, but are not things that enter the Chinese mind when they try to produce and sell a product. The bottom line is that they simply do not care as long as they make money. And they will make money regardless. Why? Because theirs is a culture that is used to shoddy products, shoddy treatment by others, and shoddy back room deals when problems (like the milk scandal) arise. The people accept this completely as inevitable and generally consider trying to fight it or improve circumstances in any way extremely useless. If China was still a closed nation, no one would have heard anything about the milk. Some low-level official would have been paid off to not cause any trouble, make the problem public or take it to any upper level officials. Repercussions would either not take place at all or would be handled internally and quietly. The suffering families would have gotten shrugs and turned backs. The first instinct of a Chinese when making any mistake, large or small, is to hide it and either hope that it goes away or hope that no one will ever notice or be able to place the blame. This is called “saving face”, and it is an important concept and an integral part of the Chinese Way. The Chinese government is reacting the way it is at the moment because it knows that the eyes of the world are watching. Think about the kid that is so sweet, smiling and helpful when adults are around and cruel, vicious and sneaky when adult backs are turned, and you’ll get my meaning. It might also help to remind you all that this is not the first time. Newspapers mention other issues such as the dog food and toy issues of the past year. Remember also in 2003 or 4, when tons of babies in China died because a milk powder company decided to replace some of the nutritious powder with flour, causing the babies to starve to death. The rationale was that they could make more money by replacing the powder with flour, which costs less to produce.
Getting back to my other news, there will be a blog entry on my trip to Qufu coming soon, when I have time to write it. In the meantime, enjoy the pics of Shanghai on Flickr and keep in touch when you can!
