David's Big Adventure in China

Last Friday was a holiday (“Pure and Bright Day” for honoring the dead) so many people had the day off. Some friends invited me to go with them on a trip to Dali and Jizu Shan (mountain). Four of us (3 ladies and me….I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong…lol….the 3 of them shared a room and I had a room to myself) boarded an overnight train at 11:00 p.m. (see pics) on Thursday night and arrived in Dali at about 8 the next morning. Dali is famous for its ancient city (see pics) and its Bai minority people. The taxi driver that took us from the train station took us to a hotel operated by friends or family and we got a nice room for about $6. We then hired him for about 7 hours to drive us around to show us the sights and he charged us $14. We spent the evening walking around the ancient city and had drinks in one of the many bars. Saturday morning we took a local bus to the long distance bus station then took another bus to Jizu Shan which was about 3 hours away.

Jizu Shan is famous for its many temples and monks. We arrived at about noon, had some lunch then began climbing the mountain. Like most famous mountains in China it had a paved walkway and many stairs. There was one section that had 476 stairs (see pics). In roughly 3 hours we climbed about 3500 feet over a total distance of about 5 miles. After spending about 45 minutes visiting the temple and pagoda at the top we went back down quickly in about 90 minutes since it was almost dark. We stayed near the bottom of the mountain in a building that is combination restaurant and guesthouse. It was the worst place I’ve stayed in China. The room was very basic and there was a Chinese style toilet down the hall and a simple sink outside the toilet. There was no shower or bath and no hot water. The cost was the same as our nice rooms in Dali. The next morning a van took us to the nearest town and we took a sleeper bus from there back to Kunming and arrived at about 5:00 p.m.

I just finished reading a couple books about China that I’d like to recommend to you. The first one is a fiction based in Tibet called Lost Horizon by James Hilton and it is a very enjoyable book even if you have no real interest in learning about Tibet. The second one is Forgotten Kingdom by Peter Goullart and it is an account of his time living in Lijiang (referred to as Likiang in the book as the names of many places in China have changed over time) in the 1940’s and working for the Chinese government. It gives a very interesting account of the history of that time and place and the different groups of people that inhabited the area and talks about the communist takeover in 1949.

The last thing I’ll write about this time is regarding the degree to which China is bilingual. There are English signs in most places and the buses in Kunming have English announcements of the stops in addition to the Chinese announcements. In general, China and its people are pretty accommodating of those of us who don’t speak the language well. Of course having English in so many places makes life for us laowai (foreigners) so much easier. I know many Americans get very frustrated with foreigners coming to the U.S. and not being able to speak English. I have a different perspective on that now living as a foreigner in another country. I am trying hard to learn the language but it is a tremendous challenge. Of course, since they have a written language that doesn’t use English characters it is even more difficult. I am not trying to learn to read and write, only to speak. I have gotten to the point where most of the time I can express what I want but still have great difficulty understanding when someone replies to me.

In the span of less than 6 weeks it has gone from winter with snow on the ground to summer with temps in the mid to upper 80’s. It’s not humid so it still feels pretty comfortable. Until next time…….

I actually teach for 2 different schools even though I collect my pay from just one of them. Half my classes are YUFE (Yunnan University of Finance and Economics) classes and the other half are IBS (International Business School) classes. IBS is a special school set up under YUFE for Chinese students whose test scores were not high enough to get into YUFE and for foreign students. There are about 30 French students here under the IBS program and I sit in with some of them in their Chinese class. They are juniors or seniors but they did not study Chinese before coming here. The French students are incredibly lazy. Most classes only about half to 2/3 of them show up and most of the ones that do show up arrive late. It seems they study very little outside of class and don’t work too hard in class either.

The IBS students that I teach are for the most part pretty lazy compared to the YUFE students. The longer students here have been at the university the more lazy they become. In grade school, middle school and high school they were pushed hard by their teachers and parents and constantly monitored. Now that they are in university they are not being pushed or monitored as much and for the first time in their lives they have to employ self discipline and self motivation. They also figure out that the school goes to great lengths to keep them from failing. I failed a couple kids last semester and the school asked me a couple weeks ago if I would give them another chance at the final exam to see if they could pass the class. I said I wouldn’t do that because the class was easy enough to pass and these 2 kids gave very little effort and missed many classes. They will probably find someone else to give them some easy test so they can pass the class. Cheating on exams is also very common. The first written exam I gave last semester I had 2 different answer sheets using the same questions but had the answers in different order. When I did the grading I found a few students that had obviously been looking at their neighbor’s paper for the answers. They actually would have done much better had they used their own best guess at the answer. I put a note on their exams asking did they get their answers from their neighbor’s paper. None of them came to see me to dispute it. Sometimes my principals go against the Chinese way…..lol.

About 3 weeks ago I found that there were 12 more signatures on the attendance sheet than students in the room for my IBS sophomore writing class so I took role and kept the sheet and corrected it before turning it in. One of the students is normally responsible for turning it in to the office. The next week I told them that was not acceptable and that the sheet should only reflect the students present. I also gave them an assignment to write a paper titled “Does corruption start with falsifying attendance sheets?”. The following week a student handed me the attendance sheet to sign and I found that there were 4 more signatures on the sheet than students in the room. I became very angry and I tore up the sheet, threw in on the floor and yelled “do it again!”. It was a rare moment of quiet in the room as the students are normally constantly talking. This week when I was given the sheet it was right. I spent about 10 minutes of the class talking about integrity and honesty. They actually listened but who knows how much impact I have had.

Students here spend about 20 hours a week in classes vs. 12 to 15 hours for U.S. students but do less study on their own than American students. Less than 5% of my students have ever had a part time job. Jobs are scarce and with the demands of school before they reach university working is just not a real option for them. Since most of them are an only child their parents focus on getting them a good education so they will be successful and able to support the parents when they are old. Most of them don’t really get much career counseling before they go to university and once they enter university they are basically stuck in their major as it is almost impossible for them to change. For most of them their major is decided by their parents.

Last weekend the school took some of the foreign teachers and the Chinese teachers that teach the foreign students on a trip to a city about 60 miles from here. It took us (26 in all) over 3 hours to get their on Friday afternoon because the roads were so bad and the shocks on the bus were seemingly nonexistent so we had to go very slow. We stayed at a “resort” on a mountain where we had dinner and then danced around the fire with the local minority people. The rooms of the resort were basic with Chinese style toilet and shower. On Saturday morning we visited the park on the mountain where the overthrown Emperor from the Ming dynasty is said to have gone into hiding. He planted some peony flowers there in memory of a lady and the mountain is famous for the flowers (see pics). We left the mountain at 11:30 then stopped in the town nearby for mushroom hotpot for lunch. They cook many delicious mushrooms (my province is famous for its mushrooms) in a broth in a pot that’s in a hole in the table and then add other items such as chicken, pork, and other vegetables. We then serve ourselves from the pot. It was quite delicious! We arrived back at the school about 4:30. Well that’s it for now……..take care!

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