A Sichuan government official stuns the public and the authorities by relinquishing his chance to carry the Olympic torch in an effort to pursue justice for earthquake victims: “If we education administrators had fulfilled our duties and guarded against corruption, our school buildings would have stood firm and the teachers and children wouldn’t have died for no good reason. So much tragedy could have been avoided.“

Some days you feel like you’re a horrible student, and other days you feel great about your studies. Often this has very little to do with your actual progress in the language and more to do with peripheral factors, like what kind of conversation partners you choose, or how you’re handling the culture stress. Being able to monitor your level of culture stress is an important skill. So is knowing how to choose conversation partners.

Choose Encouraging Language Practice Experiences
Martin Symonds, who wrote our textbooks, covered the coffee table with a big piece of paper and drew a map of the area surrounding our school. Then he got our group of language students to mark down where there were the right kind of people to practice on. Fruit sellers, flower merchants, shoe repairmen, and fake DVD hawkers all got marked on the map. By “right kind” of people, he meant people who leave you feeling good about your Chinese, and who (ideally):

• speak to you at a level just slightly above your current level;
• won’t use English;
• will let you set the conversation agenda re: topic, grammar, and vocabulary;
• can be talked to for a set amount of time (trying to make conversation when you’ve run out of things to say can be discouraging).

Martin suggested paying people if you can’t find people to do this for free, and that when you pay them, you can make them help you repeat the same stuff over and over until you get it (but that you should be a decent human being and limit such sessions to 15-30 minutes). Martin emphasized the importance to language learners of deliberately choosing language practice experiences that leave you encouraged, rather than discouraged, and that’s when I began to realize that my language progress self-assessment was pretty arbitrary.

Discouraged about your progress? The real difference between “good days” and “bad days”
For example, Monday this week I felt terrible about my Chinese. My teacher gave me this long lecture on how to improve my learning, which in Chinese-style means criticizing all the things you’re doing wrong and appealing to a lot of negative motivators – not the P.C., self-esteem building, sappy fluff they used to give us elementary school in Vancouver. Jessica was once brought to tears when her teacher tried to “encourage” her Chinese-style, which means pointing out your shortcomings and saying how you’re not good enough or studying enough and you need to work harder (never mind that Jessica’s progressing faster than most of the students in the school; she’ll be an entire book ahead of me by the time we’re done). This kind of typical Chinese criticism is supposed to show that they care about you and want you to do well (it’s also how parents show love to their children and wives to their husbands). In my case on Monday my teacher was tired of me asking too many tangential questions in class and playing with the grammar too much; she wants me to basically just shut up unless prompted and stick closer to the textbook grammar examples. After her monologue about my language learning shortcomings, we reviewed a bunch of old vocab, most of which I couldn’t remember because I rarely if ever have need to discuss international trading. Anyway, I walked out of class feeling pretty bad, like I ought to punish myself with eight solid hours of repeating textbook mp3s to myself in solitary confinement.

But then, inexplicably, Tuesday to Friday were fantastic language days. Thursday I spent six solid hours in Chinese conversation, two in class, two with students from the foreign language university who have to log hours practicing teaching Chinese to foreigners, and two hours interviewing my next magazine column victim. It made me feel like I was progressing so much, and it was really enjoyable. On Wednesday even the Old Boys Club, with their fast and mushy Tianjin accents and thick-skinned humour couldn’t make me feel bad, even though they started obsessing (again) about how much our school fees are (I still haven’t told them), couldn’t understand why I avoided telling them, and called me names (like “stupid egg”; 笨蛋), which they probably thought I couldn’t understand. But it didn’t matter, because I was feeling good. Instead of being really annoying and making me feel bad about my inability to finesse that kind of conversation like I’d want to in English, it was funny and made a good story to laugh about with friends. But if this had happened Monday afternoon, I would’ve felt even more guilty.

The point is that our moods, which are impacted by many things other than our language performance, often determine how we feel about our language progress, regardless of how praiseworthy our progress may be.

Monitor Your Culture Stress
When I find myself on my bike yelling at traffic in English, that’s usually a sign I need to chill out for a bit. Between the English and the noise the drivers can’t hear me, and it lets off a little steam. Only once or twice was I so annoyed/culture-stressed that I said something in Chinese without thinking (“What are you doing?!“) to a vehicle, and all they were doing was being a Chinese driver (note: it’s OK to be a Chinese driver in China). Other times we might take the long way around to avoid passing certain people who we’d otherwise have to stop and chat with. Sometimes you can be inexplicably tired. When we find ourselves doing or feeling these kinds of things, it can mean we need a short break, or we need to sleep, and/or we need to get more comfortable with Chinese culture. But when you’re feeling this way, chances are you aren’t going to feel great about your Chinese. So it’s important to ask, “Do I feel bad about my Chinese because my Chinese shouldn’t be this bad after a year and half, or just because I’m culture stressed and in a bad mood?”

The Culture Bubble
The only real “cure” for culture stress is to continue learning about and engaging the culture. The more comfortable you become in the culture, the less stressful it is. Taking short breaks from the culture by retreating into your “cultural bubble” – like by hanging out for an evening with just foreigner friends or immersing yourself in foreign entertainment media – is OK and occasionally necessary, in small, occasional doses. Unfortunately, many (perhaps most?) foreigners in China live the opposite way: they live in their foreign cultural bubble and make occasional forays into Chinese culture. Living in the foreign culture bubble is unavoidable when you’re new and have no language skills, but it takes consistent intentional effort and choices to, over time, move out of your own cultural bubble and start living in the culture of your host country.

For people who hope to not just live on the Mainland longterm but actually live in China, dealing intentionally and consistently with the “cultural bubble” is a must. (We gave this same sermon to ‘Shine Far,’ who’s preparing to enter a PhD program in the States.)

This is one of the coolest things to come though my bloglines in a long time. Chinese teachers in Uganda are photographing and writing their experiences in English: “Becoming a Real Foreigner.”

Air pollution of a different kind today: sand.

My teacher said this isn’t an actual sandstorm (沙尘暴 – shā chén bào); it’s just “scattering sand” (扬沙 – yáng shā). But it’s still nasty being outside in the wind.

May’s propaganda
There is no shortage of “Welcome the Olympics, be more civilized, establish a new atmosphere” banners. They’re even on taxis and buses. Neighbourhood committees are putting up posters listing the names of residents and how much they each donated to the earthquake relief effort. Roads are getting paved, unfinished buildings are getting the outsides slapped on, other buildings are getting facelifts, our fake roof is finished, you can buy 10元 (<$1.50) t-shirts on the university campuses the say "I [heart] China! Go China! Go Chinese!" and "Go China!" with politically correct maps that conspicuously include all the disputed South China Sea Islands. The “be more civilized” cartoons are posted all over, and near the school people’ve painted a giant mural of them, right next to another big slogan:

The slogan on the right says:

“Liberate thought, do work & create industry, scientific development.”
解放思想，干事创业，科学发展

Along the top of the left photo is yet another “Welcome the Olympics, be more civilized, establish a new atmosphere.”

Also, these three articles have been waiting in line since the end of February:

• Confessions Of A Propagandist
  A guy who worked two years as a “language polisher” for China’s official news agency’s English service introduces us to the world of China’s official media and the difficulties of translating official newspeak into readable English.
• “The Connection Has Been Reset”
  Explains how they control internet content and monitor user activity, how easy it is for users to get around the restrictions, and why, despite the ease with which people can get around said restrictions, the system’s quite effective anyway.
• Beijing’s Sky Blues & More ‘Blue Skies’ in Beijing
  You may have heard that Beijing has increased its air quality and met ‘blue sky’ targets ahead of the Olympics. A D.C.-based ‘independent environmental consultant,’ who was a 2006 Princeton in Asia fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing, explains how they manipulated their data collection procedure to report more ‘blue sky days.’ Beijing’s environmental officials respond with, “This phenomenon does not exist,” though I’m not sure if they’re referring to statistics tampering, or blue sky days.

Jessica has a hilarious post in the works about the treatment her and her workout buddy get at the gym from the middle aged ladies. Stay tuned…

A foreign reporter in the earthquake region visited parents at a collapsed school: “Many parents of deceased schoolchidren have been holding the photos of their children and charging publicly that the school building was a ‘tofu residue’ project. They wanted the government to give them justice … The man got down on his knees, grabbed me and cried aloud. Suddenly all the other parents followed him and knelt down. On the whole sports field, I was the only person standing.”

This was a cool opportunity. Tianjin’s drama school, which trains kids to eventually become Beijing Opera (京剧) performers and TV/film actors, let a group from our language school come and observe their Beijing Opera classes in action.

(I suggest you let this video load while you read, since it’s a few minutes long.)

The kids were elementary to high school aged, and the older ones study around 12 hours a day (I didn’t hear about the younger ones), beginning with exercise at 6:30am (the acrobatics required by some of these roles is no joke). They live on the campus and their studies include regular schooling. By the time they’re done, they will have learned around 15 different roles from various operas. These kids will hopefully find jobs with opera troupes in various cities, once they graduate from a two-year college program.

The student at right is practicing the role of a female general, which looked physically demanding with all the jumps and twirls and spear-spinning and exacting technical expectations of her teacher, who would often step in to adjust the angle of her hand or arm or posture. When in full costume her face paint would indicate that her character is a fierce and capable warrior.

Click the photos for a bigger view. The classrooms were a little dim for taking photos and video, but you can still get a little bit of feel for it.

These boys are playing generals. In ancient China the flags on their backs served as armour protecting them from behind.

Only the highest ranking people, like generals, would get to wear the platform shoes.

This girl is playing a woman wrongly accused of killing her husband (hence the chains). The girls in front of the mirror are practicing dealing with their extra long sleeves, which served to hide civilized women’s hands and keep them from appearing too “开放” (open, loose) in public:

The female actors have to move as if their feet are bound, and generally carry themselves as ancient cultured women were expected. These beginner students are learning the basics:

At one point this nice grandma of a teacher suddenly in mid-verse pointed at one girl whose posture wasn’t quite right and said, “肚子!” (tummy!).

These boys were practicing navigating their beards while performing what looked like a long, painful dance routine, where they were required to hold difficult poses for long periods of time, jump, and switch feet in mid-leap without tripping on the beard. In this pose, the student had to slowly bend his right knee down and then up again:

A civilized warrior would be able to fight without getting his beard too messed up; a well-kept beard displayed one’s civilized nature.

These girls were practicing a singing part that required very little movement, but the teacher required that every movement, down to each finger, be placed exactly so:

The boy on the right is playing the Beijing Opera equivalent of a clown. When in costume his face would be painted in a way indicating his role as the comic relief, and his stick would be a long pipe:

On our way out we passed the high school girls’ dorm. There were a couple of blond toddlers in our group (some students brought their kids) and they became magnets for an adoring mob of female students. In China, you can’t get much cuter than little blond white kids.

Pronounced: jīng jù
Means: Beijing Opera

四川大地震北川现场纪实 – The moment earthquake happened in Sichuan

This translated essay demonstrates the difficulty Mainlanders face when offering sorely needed constructive criticism into an atmosphere of insecure hyper-nationalism. Originally written in Chinese.

A Chinese intellectual’s critique of China’s earthquake response (English/中文):
“At this moment, we need churches to pray with awe, but we only have squares.
At this moment, we need music to console our souls, but we only have slogans.
At this moment, we need tranquility, but there is only noisy shouting.
At this moment, we need silent contemplation, but there is only a fevered crowd.”