China Hope Live » Teaching English

Mainland students lining up for Western private schools

Joel 大江 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:35:58 +0000

I’ve witnessed the rise of Mainland students both at the private American university from which I graduated and in the ESL program of the private Canadian high school where I’m temporarily teaching. I also have a one-on-one private student in a public school’s ESL program. For some, it’s not their first private school in Canada; one student left the school an agency in China had pitched to her after the first semester because it was basically a big scam. Anyway, here’s an interesting report/first-person account of the rise of Mainlanders in private U.S. schools:

How China’s New Love Affair with U.S. Private Schools Is Changing Them Both

American high school diplomas are the new must-have for the upwardly mobile. Thousands of miles away, U.S. private schools are adjusting accordingly.

In six years, boarding schools like Deerfield and The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut reported a ten-fold increase in the number of Chinese applications.

It is also a lens into their complicated and often conflicting psychology: increasingly ambitious and outward-looking, at once sophisticated and perhaps a bit naive, they seem driven by a combination of faith in China’s future and distrust of its present; a belief that education abroad will translate into success at home. But, dazed by the new emerging opportunities and eager to follow the latest trend that promises them long-term security, both the parents and their children sometimes get something very different from what they’d hoped for.

The story quoted above does an infinitely better job than this one from last December.

And I couldn’t resist this photo of Prime Minister Stephen Harper schmoozing Chinese students (that’s not Dashan in the background, is it?):

More on teaching Mainlanders ESL in Canada:

Eaves-dropping on Beijingers in Vancouver

Joel 大江 — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:22:40 +0000

Last Friday I started teaching a month-long EFL “Winter Camp” program for nine Beijingers aged 8-13 who arrived the night before. We have English class in the mornings and field trips in the afternoons. They’re all staying with Canadian families and it’s a shocking cultural adventure for them. Almost everything is different. It’s rare to get a group this “fresh”, and I plan to have fun with it.

We’re using a classroom in a posh local private school that is pretty impressive even by Canadian standards, so the facilities and grounds are really nice; they were awed by the interactive white board, for example. But they were also excited just to walk down the hall to the bathroom, armed with their cameras, taking photos of everything from the vending machines to the high school classes in session with their doors open. I’ve taught this kind of EFL gig before, and sometimes the kids have already traveled so much that being in a developed Western country isn’t so special, but not these kids. They’re apparently doing this kind of thing for the first time. I felt like a celebrity in the classroom with all the cameras aimed at me.

I’ve decided to keep the fact that I can speak basic Mandarin a secret from them for as long as I can, so I can listen in on their conversations as much as I can. Between my limited Mandarin, my teaching responsibilities, and the fact that four excited 12-year-old girls babbling away at once is hard to decipher in any language, I don’t get to tune in to their conversations near enough to satisfy my curiosity, never mind pausing to scribble down notes of what I hear. But it’s still funny what I do catch.

Friday morning was their first morning in Canada after their first night and breakfast with a Canadian family. Before class started they were animatedly telling one another about how BIG everything in their homestays’ house is, even the bookshelves. Then they were talking about what they were fed for breakfast and what was packed in their lunches, how it was either gross or they didn’t know what it was. It was funny in its own right, but extra funny to hear the “foreigner” experience in reverse. We’ll see what the next month brings!

Other experiences of teaching Chinese students in Vancouver:

You can browse all of our ESL/EFL teaching post here.

Racism in Vancouver, Canada and my ESL student’s experience

Joel 大江 — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:58:48 +0000

It started with an unengaged substitute teacher, escalated with white kids throwing unprovoked juice boxes and insults at the Chinese kids, peaked with a fistfight between one of my Chinese tutoring students and two local black kids, and ended (hopefully) with a two-day suspension from school. My student ended up with a long, nasty scratch across his shoulder and chest.

I get that cafeteria scuffles will happen, and that race is only one factor among many and perhaps not even the main one. But the local students were swearing at the ESL kids in Chinese — they’ve been around Chinese classmates enough to pick up the swear words. It’s his first semester in Canada, but it’s not the first time he’s been randomly accosted for being Chinese. Getting cursed at in your own language by passing locals seems to me to be a little bit worse than having random Chinese people yell “老外！” at you.

Since we’re back in Vancouver, Canada for a few months I’ve picked up some ESL tutoring students. This one, like many, came to Vancouver to finish high school because his parents knew he wouldn’t do well on the 高考, the Chinese college entrance exam. He’s in a grade 11 ESL program at a local public school, with generally poor English, and it’s interesting to hear him relate his fight at school yesterday from a second-language, only partially-understood perspective (for example, he knows he was being taunted and challenged but doesn’t know exactly what they said to him, aside from the Chinese swear words). But it also makes me rethink about the experiences of Chinese students in Canadian schools. I don’t want to imagine what kind of impression he and his mom are getting.

I assume that my white majority perspective, growing up and being educated in a multicultural environment, maybe gives me a rosier-than-reality view of the current Asian Canadian racial experience in Vancouver. I’m not accusing Vancouverites of being exceptionally racist; although I think we’re generally much less civilized than we think we are, it was just one schoolyard scuffle, and I didn’t notice any racism when I was a white student among a large minority of Indians and Asians. But incidents like that of my student yesterday start me wondering if perhaps some of the sunshine and rainbows of our multicultural utopia shine a little less brightly for the immigrants and international students than they do for us in the white majority.

More about Asian Canadian and ESL student experiences:

About racism in China:

“Chairman Mao is like a god to us!”

Joel 大江 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:13:59 +0000

Chris is probably the cockiest person I’ve ever met. Not in a 19-year-old, blinded-to-danger-by-testosterone kind of way, but in a “my family is so deep in the Party that I’m untouchable and I know it” kind of way. And it was true — he got away with everything. He racked up multiple written warnings for things like scamming the other students and the school. But the school was afraid to risk ticking him off because he was too connected. And he knew it. He had this permanent smirk on face. He swaggered around the school, flirted and felt-up his showpiece most-made-up-girl-in-the-school girlfriend while ignoring the teachers and texting during class.

It was only after a tantrum where he threw a water bottle at foreign teacher’s head during a face-losing showdown in front of a large group class when the teacher forced him to obey a rule he was trying to openly flaunt — and the teacher told the school that he would never teach Chris again, period — that he finally left for good (I don’t know if they actually kicked him out, but I doubt it).

When you looked at him, you knew you were looking at one piece of China’s “symphony of privilege,” the kind of Chinese who would yell things like “My dad is Li Gang!” (see here, here, here, here and here) or “Who dares call the police?” (here, here, here and here) or possibly even worse.

A recent post by Yaxue Cao’s on Seeing Red in China called “Traitor of the Chinese People” reminded me that I once had my own drama with Chris. I once had to, with the help of two other students, physically escort him out of class. It was a free talk group class. The students were supposed to talk about whatever they wanted, so long as they used English. They were all adults. One older man, a retired philosopher named Alex who’d been “sent down” for several years during the Cultural Revolution, started saying some negative things about Mao (Alex would criticize Mao at every opportunity, in his slow, calm, 60-year-old Chinese philosopher kind of way — it was both shocking and entertaining to see). Chris immediately jumped to Mao’s defense. They argued back and forth, quickly switching into Chinese. Alex remained calm mostly, but Chris got livid. He was on his feet yelling and waving his finger in the older man’s face. Would not switch back to English. He got so out of control, rude and unmanageable that we eventually physically forced him out. A few hours later, when I figured he’d calmed down, I went to talk to him:

“Chris, I don’t care what opinion you express in class, but you must be respectful of the other students. Especially older students.”

“But you didn’t hear what he said about Chairman Mao!”

“I don’t care what he says about Mao, or what you say about Mao — you can have whatever opinion you want — so long as you are respectful to each other in class.”

“But he can’t say those things about Chairman Mao! Chairman Mao is like a god to us!”

Those were his exact words. I didn’t know what to say, though a whole lot came to mind!

Not every Mainlander has a positive view of Mao, but the vast majority of them do, and sometimes the younger, more privileged ones are the most devoted. It shocked us when we first arrived. Newbies be ye warned!

You can read more about Mao’s seemingly unassailable mythical status here:

Chinese “compliments” — English student edition

Joel 大江 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:00:16 +0000

Chinese ways of showing interest, care or concern for someone often take the form of unsolicited advice about things foreigners consider very personal, usually with humourous (if the foreigners are well-adjusted) or tearful (if they’re not) results. Here’s what one of my bald coworkers received in a Chinese Valentine’s Day card from one of our students:

I had an experience of touching your head. It was not slipped as I imagined. but it was nice. At last, I have a suggestion: lose some weight! You’ll more handsome, no the most handsome if you lose your weight!

Have a baby soon.

For more about this quirky (to us) Chinese way of showing interest, care or concern see:

Forget marketable skills, in China you get paid to be white

Joel 大江 — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:19:26 +0000

It’s no secret that some of the people (mostly males) “teaching” “English” in China tend to give the impression that maybe they’re here because they couldn’t hack it in their home countries, where being a Euro-American isn’t considered a marketable job skill. Here’s two first-hand accounts of getting paid to be a foreigner in China in two common but different situations:

Sex, Violence, Nudity, Profanity & Religion: You know you’re in China when…

Joel 大江 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:08:56 +0000

In my (riveting) “Movie Class” this afternoon, I ask the students to tell me the kind of content that affects a movie’s rating. They start throwing out answers.

“Violence.”
“Nudity.”
“Sexuality.”
“Bad words.”
“Religion.”

“What?”

“Religion.”

“Why do you put religion in the same category as violence, nudity, profanity and sexuality?”

“Because it is harmful to the children.”

“Who told you religion is harmful to children?”

“My primary school teacher. She said we must believe in the science…”

“Well, who told her?”

Awkward giggles, but not too awkward. The students (all adults) know where I’m going with this. “You know a lot of scientists are also ‘religious’, right?”

My university age student isn’t trying to argue a point; he’s just repeating the answer he’s been told. He actually doesn’t know that religion doesn’t factor into movie ratings. Neither does a lot of the class,

“No, wait,” say some of the girls in the front, “They go to church at the end…”. The movie we’re discussing is Lassie, and they’ve just realized that the church scene apparently isn’t enough to tarnish its G rating.

“Right. Outside China religious content doesn’t affect a movie’s rating. Now, who remembers the proper word for ‘blood and guts’…?”

When I hear someone use “religion” and “harmful to children” in the same sentence, I immediately think of the “New Atheists”, not China’s education system. It’s funny — and telling — that I was reminded of them in this way. Apparently Chinese Communist Party education and New Atheist propaganda share certain similarities — who knew? ;)

Split-pants vs. Diapers: which do you use? Parents, share your split-pants experience!

Joel 大江 — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 02:53:26 +0000

When my sister in Canada was pregnant we mailed her some Chinese split-pants (开裆裤) as a joke. There’s no way she would possibly have taken them seriously. But they’re no joke to most Mainland Chinese. I can’t remember ever hearing about split-pants before we came to China, and I’d certainly never seen them in action! Most North Americans probably don’t even know what Chinese split-pants are, and the ones who do know probably aren’t aware that most Chinese people greatly prefer them to diapers. Chinese parents typically don’t use diapers, at least not like we do, not because they’re an unaffordable luxury, but because they feel diapers are horribly inferior to split-pants.

Yesterday I played The Poopsmith Song by Over the Rhine (listen / lyrics) for my students before making them compare and discuss Western and Chinese styles of potty training. Had about 30 in the class, in their 20′s to 40′s, and they produced a long list of criticisms: diapers make the baby uncomfortable, they’re environmentally unfriendly, dirty, bad for the baby’s health and skin, too hot, etc. There was only one student who had anything good to say about Western-style (i.e. diaper-using) potty training, and I’m pretty sure he was just throwing the foreign teacher/father a bone. I actually had to explain some of the major differences between North American and Chinese potty training styles because most of the class didn’t know anything about North American potty training. For example, they didn’t know that most “foreigners” don’t know about and have never even seen split-pants.

I’m not advocating one way or the other here, but I am curious about what different families do in China, especially if one or both parents is a foreigner and they’ve decided to use split-pants. I know of a couple expat/Chinese couples that do Chinese-style potty training — in both cases the husband is the foreigner. I’ve got my preferences, of course, but to each their own; I don’t really care how other families do it so long as you clean it up afterward. So, my question to couples who actually considered both methods of potty training: Which method do you use? How did you decide? What are the pros and cons in your experience? I’m genuinely curious. (But don’t worry, mom — it’s only idle curiosity. I know I promised. :) )

(P.S. - The photo is from this gallery: Morning with a village family.)

Some Chinese superstition for Halloween 2010

Joel 大江 — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:53:58 +0000

On the 30th I had a free talk class of mostly college-age students from richer families. Since it was almost Halloween and a Party organ has listed the rise in superstition as one of seven symptoms of moral decay among government officials, I picked “superstitions” as the topic and asked the students to tell me about common Chinese superstitions. I was interested to see how they defined the term and what things they would consider “superstitious.” We also talked about why people do certain things, about how belief is only one of several reasons a person could have for their “superstitious” behaviours.

I asked about the stuff taxi drivers hang from their rear-view mirrors, and that led the students to produce, from around their necks and wrists, a surprising number of Buddhist trinkets. I see these things all the time, especially the round wood bead bracelets on men, but I was surprised at the number of Buddha (for the girls) and Guanyin (for the guys) necklaces. They said their parents buy them from monks in the temples — one girl said her mom paid 300元 for hers ($45!). The monks perform some sort spiritual service on behalf of the child, and there’s something about power being place in the object or released from the object — their English level wasn’t high enough for me to get the theological details out of them and I suspect they wouldn’t really know anyway. As visions of Martin Luther and medieval Catholic indulgences flitted through my mind, my students said: “But we’re not superstitious. We just have these for good luck. And protection.” I wish I’d had time to press them on that, but it was funny to see how they were serious; they didn’t seem to see any contradiction at all. Apparently we’re working with different definitions of “superstitious”!

“Superstition” is 迷信 (mouseover the Chinese!).
The Chinese term my students were translating as “protection” is 避邪 (“avoid evil”).

I’ve written several times about this kind of thing, including:

What do the North Pole and Shanxi province have in common?

Joel 大江 — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 14:26:56 +0000

In class today the students had to read the following recruitment ad for a turn-of-the-century north pole expedition and guess the destination:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

I had one student read it to the others, and it went something like this:

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold…”

“Sounds like Shanxi.”

“…long months of complete darkness, constant danger…”

“Haha, definitely Shanxi.”

“…safe return doubtful.”

“It must be Shanxi!”

Shanxi (山西) is in the heart of China’s coal mining region. That means it’s super-polluted, mine bosses are super rich (“Shanxi coal mining boss” is a cliché), and coal miners are underpaid, under-protected, and killed on a regular basis in mine accidents that occasionally make the news because there are too many to cover up all of them. North Pole or a Shanxi coal mine — not sure which is the more hazardous expedition.