Life and Teaching  in China

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February 04, 2010 Australia Report in Brief

Australia is awesome.  Awesome food.  Awesome scenery.  Awesome people.  Check out Ruth's Flickr site for a lot more pictures.

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January 30, 2010 Didgeridoo Yer Website

Chinese Word of the Day: 都下不了脚了
(dōu xià bù liǎo jiǎo le literally "all not less than foot") = no room to put down feet/ room is a mess.

So, here we are in Australia.  It's been great.  Perfect summer weather but not too hot.  Beautiful country reminiscent of the foothills of the Canadian Rockies at the best time of year.  I'll be posting more vacation pictures in a day or two.  But for now, just double click on the banner picture to hear the didgeridoo player.  It's Australia.

The other day we were in the Chinese part of Melbourne and found this sign on a cafe wall.  Ruth was so tickled to be able to read the Chinese characters, and get the joke that obviously is only intended for Chinese speakers. "Special pork Bun" translates as 狗不理包子 (gǒu bù lǐ bāozi) or "dog not in bun".

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Chinese Word for the Day:尊重宗教信仰
(zūn zhòng zōng jiào xìn yǎng) = respect religious belief

January 21, 2010 Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport

     We're off for Australia.  We have a friend in a small town near Melbourne who has offered us refuge in her house, plus the use of her swimming pool, wood fired pizza oven, and car.  Wow.  There's no other way we could afford to see Australia, and certainly no better way than to have a friend to visit.
     I will be posting from the road, but for the next five weeks, the man in China will be in Australia.

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Extreme Dining

Extremely elegant, that is. 

Last night the Foreign Languages administration again treated us to a dinner, a celebration of the start of the Spring Festival holiday.  After five years in China they can still feed us things we've never had before.

 
I could recognize the sea cucumber on the right, but what was that dish on the left? (mouse over to find out)

It's an international crowd. The former judge and his wife from America, the Japanese teachers,
the Russian dance teacher and her son, and our Chinese hosts.

Munching this gourmet food we all agreed that Jiangnan University is the best place to work in China, if not the world.

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Student Opinion Poll Continued

Last week I told my students about the Danish cartoonist and asked them whether the paper should have been allowed to publish the cartoon.  This week I told them about France banning the hijab, the Muslim scarf, and other religious symbols in public places.  This week's question: Was France right to ban the wearing of religious symbols in public.

The vote:  16 to 7 in favor of authoritarian control.  As I said before, this is their culture and they like it the way it is. 
     Those who said France was wrong often stated that we should respect religion.  I asked them why, and explained that I respect people's right to believe whatever they want, but I don't necessarily respect their beliefs, or their religion.  I don't know how they deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by believing in a loving God who will punish me with eternal damnation in the fires of hell simply because I don't worship him.  Strange concept of love.  And when religious people say things that are absolutely stupid, such as the American evangelist who told his followers that the earthquake in Haiti was their own fault because they made a deal with the devil, I can see no reason to respect them at all.
     Because they know that I'm not fond of religion, my students were surprised to learn that I think France is making a mistake.  To me it seems to be religious groups that want to take away our freedom of expression.  If we take away freedoms in reaction, then the religious fanatics have truly won.

As a follow up I asked their opinion on capital punishment.  While a few students felt that capital punishment is wrong, there were no votes critical of the recent Chinese execution of the British citizen.

A bit more cognitive dissonance with this class.  Fifteen to nine against capital punishment,
but only five to eighteen critical of China's decision to execute the British drug smuggler.

And this let me explain the concept of cognitive dissonance.

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Chinese Word for the Day: 反话
(fǎn huà literally "opposite speech") = irony

January 14, 2010 Irony

     Looking back five years to before I came to China, I realize that I came to this country with an expectation that the Chinese people would be miserable.  You know, repressive communist dictatorship in power.  No freedom.  People can't say what they think about things.  But what I found here was a mostly very happy people who laugh a lot and really enjoy life.  It's been a puzzle.  According to what I've always been told in the West, the Chinese SHOULD be unhappy.  This week I think I have discovered at last a part of the reason why they are not.  This is their country, and their culture.  They like it.  They like it just the way it is.  Why in the world would we in the West expect anything else?

Fairly recently a fanatic broke into the home of Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, and attempted to kill him with an axe and a knife in front of his five year old grand daughter.  They survived by barricading themselves in the bathroom "panic room" until police could arrive to save them.  This is all part of the continuing brouhaha over the cartoon Westergaard drew that was published in a Danish newspaper.  The cartoon itself was part of a discussion of freedom of expression and self-censorship in the face of violent reprisals against artists, including the murder of a Dutch film maker, by fanatical followers of Islam.
     This past week I told my students the whole story of the Danish cartoon.  I explained that it caused no initial outrage by itself, but "religious leaders" later took the cartoon,  added other material that had nothing to do with the discussion, or with Islam for that matter, and then went to Muslim countries to instigate protests and riots.  Danish embassies were attacked.  In all, something like a hundred people ended up dead.  
     I asked my students this question:  Should the newspaper have been allowed to publish the cartoon?

It wasn't a unanimous vote by any means.  But every class came down solidly on the side of NO.  The press should not have been allowed to publish the cartoon.

This lead to a very interesting discussion.  I'm not allowed to talk about Chinese politics here, and wouldn't want to if I could.  But this is talking about Denmark.  Besides helping students develop language skills, I do see my job to be helping them appreciate and understand Western culture.  So I had to explain a few things such as:

1. There is no authority in Denmark that could forbid publishing the cartoon.

2.  Most Western countries have laws against hate crimes, but those must be promoting hatred and violence, not just commenting on it.

3.  Western democracies believe that freedom of the press is essential for a healthy society, and that controversy is acceptable as long as it is restricted to words and ideas. 

4. Political cartoons are supposed to upset people and mock ideas that some people care about.  If people are setting off bombs in the name of Islam, as seems to be happening in various places in the world, so that the entire religion is now associated with terrorism, isn't this a legitimate statement for a political cartoonist to make?

I also got a chance to explain the meaning of the word "irony".  What could be more ironic than a religious groups reacting to the suggestion that they are violent by storming embassies and rioting, and by trying to kill the man who made the suggestion with an axe.

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Goodbye to Google in China

All of the above post becomes more relevant with the news that Google has decided to withdraw from China.  I have to say good for Google.  I think this was the right decision, given the recent tightening up of communication over the Internet in China.  But I use the search engine many times every day, and the thought of Google abandoning China is more than a little disturbing.      I asked my students if they knew why Google is threatening to pull out of China.  Much of the reporting of this is blocked on the Chinese Internet.  They knew about the hacker attacks on Google, but they seemed unaware that at least some of those attacks were aimed at getting information about human rights activists.

     I'm trying to reserve the word "tragedy" for events that really deserve it, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti,  events which cause people to die.  Google leaving China is not a tragedy.  But it will be a loss for Google, and a terrible loss for the Chinese economy and the Chinese people.  Google is living up to its motto (Do no evil), and gaining a lot of very valuable public support.  China is destroying much of the good will it generated with the Olympics, to no long term purpose that I can see.  So, maybe not a tragedy, but a terrible shame and a great pity.
     Unfortunately I can't seen any solution, at least in the short term.  China can't be seen as backing down to a threat by a foreign company.  Google has to stick by it's decision or lose all credibility in the Western world.  My guess is that Google will leave as promised.  After some face saving compromises on both sides, Google may come back.  Or China may reconsider the reform and opening up policy.  But any time China has taken an isolationist position, the Chinese people have suffered for it.  I hope the Chinese leadership will see that they can't have the door open while keeping the screen door locked.

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Chinese Word for the Day: 导盲犬
(dǎo máng quǎn literally guide blind dog) = seeing eye dog

January 09, 2010  Minds Blown in Imax 3D

Spoiler alert: Giving away story points for Avatar is hardly spoiling anything.  The story is strictly formula and very predictable.  That’s not what makes the movie work, and it works very well indeed.  But you should see Avatar before you read this.

Avatar
- the perfect fantasy for a juvenile species

      We’ve just come out of watching Avatar, in Imax 3D.  What a beautiful movie.  What amazing visual effects.  What astonishing technical achievement.  What great performances.  What a nice solid and politically correct story line.  It's a new benchmark for cinematic achievement.  Such a shame that it throws away it's true potential.  It could have been a great movie.  Everything is there except the heart and brains.

Avatar - religion with a reality that actually makes sense.  What a concept.

     Avatar has everything the classic formula demands.  Greedy industrialists, avaricious despoilers with no respect for anything but money.  Thuggish military, but with one redeeming member, a woman of course (Everybody knows that men are not nurturing.) who has a big heart and won’t follow orders.  Incredible war machines, including the big walking robots from Alien now revisioned as foot soldiers. Religion that is actually founded in reality and makes sense. A nice ecology message set in a beautiful primordial forest decorated with gorgeously bioluminescent plants, hideously dangerous beasts, and handsome noble savages with a deep spiritual connection to nature and reverence for life who somehow live in total harmony with their terrifying jungle mates.  Bloody battle scenes with white knuckle acrobatic combat and aerial eye candy.
     True to the formula, the villain dies in one-on-one hand to hand combat in the penultimate scene.  Oops, make that one on two.  Times have changed.  The heroine is no longer just a “yankee”,  the helpless feminine fluff yanked through the sets by the hero, the yanker.  Today’s female hero has a more active part.  She gets to save her man and kill the bad guy.  Actually, in this movie she gets to kill the bad guy and save her man twice, no, three times counting their first meeting.  This is a new and improved formula, and who could object to that.  The allegory is beyond obvious.  It’s us, the people of the developed world, against the rain forest people.  And whose side are we on?

 
        James Cameron has obviously done it again.  The movie is breaking all box office records, and is going to be the biggest hit in movie history, right after Titanic by the same director.  Bravo.  Bravo.  Go and see it.  In fact, go and see it twice.  It’s worth it.  I truly and sincerely really loved it.  Go and see it.  And then think about it.

Avatar is an incredible ride and great fun.  But all the warm and fuzzy justification for hard hitting combat in which good guys and bad guys get to kill each other in thrillingly acrobatic ways leaves me profoundly dissatisfied.  So, here’s how I would throw away all that box office success and make this movie into a record breaking money loser.  Yes,  I would do this.  No question.  And I would do it gladly, on purpose.  Screw the investors.  Let’s finally get one thing right.  We don’t need a battle scene to end this beautiful movie.  It deserves better.
     Sure, the battle scene is the big payoff.  But is it worth it?  Do we really need to feed our children this vision of humanity, where the only choice is between kill or be killed, fight or surrender?  What about…. What about Gandhi’s solution?  Why couldn’t the forest people beat the invaders with public relations and passive resistance.  In every place on earth where this kind of conflict is currently underway, from the Congo to the Amazon rain forest, that is the only hope for the indigenous people.  They don’t have a prayer with military solutions.  Bows and arrows, even when fired from flying dragon creatures, don't do much against machine guns, as the British demonstrated with the charge of the Light Brigade.  Hunter gatherers are out gunned and over powered by our high tech culture.  But they can still win.  They just can’t do it with battle scenes. 
      I know this is a money loser, and doesn’t get the adrenalin up with lots of death and killing and oh such sorrow as characters we care about. and wonderful flying animals we care about even more, bite the dust.  But it’s a viable alternative.  Isn’t it time we acknowledged this?  Isn’t it time we stopped feeding our kids simple minded cowboys and Indians endings?
     Let me take you back to the movie for a moment.  The great tree/village has been destroyed, the home of the ever so spiritual forest people.  Now the human military machine is poised to move in and wipe out the tree dwelling savages.  Our avatar hero has tamed the colourful big boss flying critter.  He’s ready to make his pitch to the tribe.  How about he has a brain in his head?  An actual idea?  A realistic answer to the problem?  How about he finds a solution that would avoid virtually ALL of the bloodshed and horror?
     Here’s how it plays out: He calls the tribes together.  Tension is building.  The military is getting trigger happy.  And then…. The forest people lay down all their weapons.  Twenty thousand of the elegant blue humanoids simply walk toward the “sky people” camp.  The are pleading.  They are defenseless.  They are harmless.  But there’s an awful lot of them.  If a machine is sent out to move them, they lie down under its treads and passively die.  You see?  We can still get our sympathy points.  Now tell me, what is Colonel America going to do in the face of this?  Are his grunts going to slaughter these people?
     Ruth says for this to work you need media coverage.  Well, folks, it’s a movie.  Let’s add media.  Let’s add reporters and cameras.  There are human beings involved, with human feelings.  Don’t tell me they will all go along with the destructive corporate rape and pillage.
     The answer for the forest people is not fight and die, lose everything versus win and save our homeland.  The answer is meet the enemy and make a deal.  There’s a win win situation here, and it doesn’t involve killing anybody.
       I know, I know.  This is why I’m teaching in China and James Cameron is making block buster movies.  But you know what.  I don’t care.  I’m sure he has a lot of fun with all his toys.  I have a lot of fun watching what he does.  And I don’t have to feel like a traitor to my own intelligence and the intelligence of my species.
     There are lots of other criticisms of the Avatar story points.  Why, for example, didn’t the marine on their team teach the forest people some tactics.  Surely spears thrown into those helicopter rotors would be a better idea than flying straight into their guns, especially when you can have a high ground advantage.  But I’ll let those things go.  They are trivial compared to my big complaint. How can we possibly end violent military conflict here on this amazing planet if we can’t even find a good solution in our best and most expensive fantasies? 

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Chinese Word for the Day: 你赶火车吗?
(nǐ gǎn huǒchē literally "You catch a train?") = You've got a train to catch? You're in a hurry?  The same thing we might say if somebody is in a restless hurry.

January 06, 2010 (yikes!  Already?) 

Another Term Begins

This year we are doing two weeks of the next term before the Spring holiday.  Here's my new schedule for students who want to audit any of my classes.  Visitors will be welcome unless it gets too crowded.

Into the Next Decade

Anybody who is bored in this world just isn't paying attention.  Blasphemy is now illegal in Ireland, with a 25,000 Euro fine for intentionally upsetting any religious group.  The Irish atheists are fuming.  Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotes. What fun.
I note with some pleasure that religion doesn't seem to get a lot of respect on my corner of the Internet.  Here's a recent Abstruse Goose web comic that pokes gentle fun at the believers.

This prompted quite a few comments from a user group I belong to, including these:

      > Is that what they hear when we explain our world view?

       >I doubt if it’s as simple as that. I imagine some religious type might have that sort of reaction, 
         but I’m sure not most, and then there are probably some atheists out there who have
         comparable reactions when a religious person talks about their perspective.

And that inspired me to put together my own comic, with apologies to Abstruse Goose and the late George Carlin.  Call this an homage.

When I was a teenager, many adults got very upset at seeing a boy with long hair or an ear ring.  Some of them, including my father on occasion, got violently upset.  Personally I think freedom of expression includes the right to upset people.  Especially when people are irrationally touchy.  Blasphemy is NOT a hate crime.  The word does not belong in the law books of any modern nation.

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Here at Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China, life bubbles along. It's been over a week since I posted any thing.  My excuse is I've been dealing with the end of the term paperwork.  Last night I finished the lot of it. 
     Ruth has been having a great time with on line tutorials, teaching herself how to create web pages using HTML. This will give her incredible control and flexibility, not to mention a deeper understanding of website creation.  I'm looking forward to going that route myself, once she has blazed a path. 
     Today we've got an appointment to do some assessments of students for the administration.  We were expecting to do this just as a thank you for all the nice things our admin does for us, but yesterday we got a phone call telling us we'll be paid for our time.   With our plan to spend our winter vacation in outrageously expensive Australia, a bit of extra money is going to help a lot.  Our administration makes us feel valued.  Sure makes this a great place to be working.  Thanks again, folks.

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Are you Ready for Chinese Handwriting

Wang Yijing, our Chinese teacher, wrote this message on our whiteboard.  He told us that this is a sample of Chinese hand writing, and he even claimed that it could be read by any Chinese person.  Could have fooled me.

We tested this assertion on our Chinese friends.  They could actually read it, and added the line of character below the scribble.   Much to our amazement.  

Both the scribble and the characters below it say 新春  愉快 (xīn chūn yú kuài - "beginning of Spring happy")
Can you see the characters in the scribble?  I can, but I'd never be able to "in the wild".

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Christmas Dinner

Just to tidy up 2009, here are the last of the Christmas pictures. 

We couldn't find a turkey, but Ruth did manage to bake a couple of chickens in our little electric oven.  (Actually, Metro did have turkeys, but they were frozen and too big to fit in our oven.) I made mashed potatoes and a cheese sauce for the broccoli.  The yams were started in the microwave and finished with the chicken in the oven.  Ruth mixed up her fantastic Caesar salad, using the anchovy paste she brought from Canada.  I put on a pot of mulled wine that worked wonders for the undrinkable sherry I bought on our last visit to Metro.  Amazing the kinds of meals we can produce here with a hotplate, counter top electric oven, and a microwave.  No problem.  It was fun giving our friends Jenny and Panda an approximation of a Western Christmas dinner.

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Chinese word for the day:  圣诞节
(Shèng dàn jié literally birth God festival) = Christmas

December 26, 2009  Boxing Day Already

It's been a great Christmas.  We woke up this morning to find a letter from one of the recipients of our Christmas Bursary Fund in my inbox. This student had applied for money on behalf of a room mate,  not for herself.

Who says money can't buy happiness.  Not their happiness, of course.  Ours.  This letter really made our morning.  I told my friend Goody about it and she sent the following response:  "How wonderful.  If you do nothing else in your life - this will have been enough."  Wow.  This is like a get out of jail free card for life!

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Christmas Events - Care Package from Home

It's all been a blur of activity, between exam preparation, developing the power point presentation for the Christmas morning culture party, marking papers, and parties life has been full indeed.  I've had no time to update until today, Boxing Day, so I'll work backwards through the events, starting with last night's Chinese corner at our place.

Chinese Corner on Christmas Evening

We served shortbread and the students went to work on a puzzle Ruth's friends sent from Canada.  Several students brought us presents.

Gifts from the Boss

The head of our department and her assistant showed up at our door with a scarf for me, and a string of pearls for Ruth.  There's also two big boxes of apples we just picked up today.  All in all, this place treats us very well.

Gifts from Students

This is the best gift my students could have given me.  Something to remember them by, and thoughtful expressions of appreciation and friendship.

I told my students that, with my body shape, when I get fat I look like a snake that ate a watermelon. 
Obviously the image stuck with them.

Being told that I'm the first foreigner a student has met never fails to give me a thrill.

The Chinese Knot Lesson and Lecture

As part of the Christmas Day celebrations, the administration laid on a lecture on tying Chinese knots.  As an old sailor, I've always loved knots, and the Chinese are masters of this decorative art form.

We always appreciate this kind of effort by our administration.  After all, one of our reasons for being in China is to learn about the culture.  And something that gives us a hands on experience is always welcome.  Now, if I can only remember how that knot was tied...

The Christmas Morning Culture Party

With stories and songs we explained why Christmas is such a big deal to us.  Stories of childhood Christmas, going to buy the tree, shopping, the building anticipation.

GouGou, the friendliest dog in the world was a big hit with students.

 
The history of Santa Claus.  Alastair Sim in "A Christmas Carol. Where Rudolph came from and
how a cowboy got involved.  Amazing the number of Christmas icons.

Ruth explains the mysterious power of mistletoe.  I'm just a prop here.

The story of the Grinch who Stole Christmas has deep resonance for Ruth.  Her father was a military man, away a lot, and when he told the story at Christmas he WAS the Grinch, complete with transformation to the loving father, reunited with the family.

Christmas Eve cocktails at Elaine's

I spent most of the party in the Kitchen enjoying my violin and supplying background music.  A great party.

 
Elaine is Jewish.  Ironic that she was throwing the Christmas bash.  I played "HaTikva" in her honour. 
Love that melody.

The Christmas Dinner at a Five Star Hotel

Once again, thanks to the administration of Jiangnan University for another feast.

Dinner with our Fellow Teachers at a Japanese Restaurant

Dinner with foreign friends at a Japanese restaurant, Wuxi, China

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And One Disquieting Note

Apparently China will soon prevent it's citizens from registering domain names on the Internet unless they get government approval as a business.  Coming soon: Any website that does not register with the Chinese government will be blocked in China.
     China is already blocking Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter.  This latest news is very disturbing.  How many foreign domains will bother registering with China?  How much of the window to the Western world is China going to close down?  What will be the consequences for China's relationship with the outside world?  To me it seems like more erosion of the good will created by the Olympics.  It gives ammunition to China's enemies.
     This is being presented as part of a crackdown on pornography.  I think it's safe to say that most foreigners are rather skeptical about this.  I worry that aspects of my culture - such as sex education, the Intactivist (anti-circumcision) movement, gay rights, and adult theme web comics - would be considered pornographic by some people.  I also prefer to be treated as an adult by those in power.

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Chinese word for the day: 跳伞
(tiào sǎn literally "jump umbrella"  Note that sǎn, "umbrella", actually looks like one 伞) = v. o. parachute; bail out

December 20, 2009 Baseball Season Starts Early

It's quite cold here now, with temperatures near zero at night.  Yesterday riding past the sports stadium on our bikes, I was surprised to see baseball training in progress.

 
I'm not quite sure why this surprised me, but it's the first sign of America's national game I've seen in China.

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Click here or scroll down for the whole story and application details..

Chinese word for the day: 马上
(mǎ shàng literally "horse up") = right away

December 11, 2009 "individualism", a big word for "selfishness"?

I hope this is the last word in this site on "individualism" and "individualist".  And as usual, it isn't the Chinese who lack understanding.  The problem is on my side of the cultural divide. 
     A definition has two components - denotation and connotation.  The Chinese have the definition of "individualism" in their culture.  No problem.  They give it the same denotation as we give it - "one who thinks independently and makes up his own mind".  It's the connotation that is different.  It's as if two separate cultures both know what a car is, and give it the same definition, but one culture says it is desirable or even essential, while the other says it is selfish and destructive.
     My favorite definition of "individualism" came from one of my students.  "It's a big word for selfishness," she said.  Hopefully, after my talk this morning, she will understand that we don't see individualism as necessarily selfish, though it might be.
     It was a fun class.  How many excuses am I going to get to sing "The Draft Dodger" song, now that the sixties are ancient history.  My students are very sympathetic to the young Americans who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. After all, they were saying that America was wrong, and they wouldn't fight the Chinese communists.  So there's an example of individualism being a good thing, even to the Chinese.

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The Chinese National Anthem

Last week Jawk, one of our visitors to our Chinese corner, brought me the music and lyrics for the Chinese national anthem, the "Volunteer Army Marching Song".  I'm proud to say that I'm now able to sing it without stumbling or blocking on the words.  This lead to the following dialogue with one of my students:

Student:  Why are you doing that?

Me: If you came to Canada, wouldn't you learn the Canadian national anthem?

Student: Of course.

Me: Then why wouldn't I learn the Chinese national anthem?

So, for all you 外国人 (wài guó rén literally outside country person = foreigner) in China, here it is: The Chinese national anthem, with pinyin pronunciation guide and translation.

My translation is a little loose, not word for word.  For example, the Chinese say "blood flesh", where we would say "flesh and blood".  Also, 长城 (cháng chéng) can be translated as "Great Wall" or simply "impregnable barrier".  And 万众一心(wàn zhòng yì xīn)  word for word is "ten thousand crowd one heart" through it really means "complete unity". But I think as a translation into English, mine will serve well enough.
     The melody for this anthem makes a great marching song.  The combination of melody and rhythm just makes me feel like marching into that bright future.  But for us the lyrics sound out of date, almost quaint.  To us it sounds isolationist, with the line about building a new Great Wall, and militaristically paranoid with the line about facing enemy artillery.  You'll note that Tián Hàn, the man who wrote these lyrics, died in 1968.  His words reflect a different time, and a different history.  But all my students are very patriotic.  They love their country, and love China's anthem.  So I was surprised to learn that some Chinese are also saying that this anthem is out of date, and pushing to adopt 茉莉花 (mò li huā, jasmine flower) as the national anthem. 
     茉莉花 (mò li huā) is a beautiful melody, a musical icon of China, and perhaps China's most famous and recognizable piece of music.  Far from being a marching song, or aggressively militaristic, it goes to the other extreme, and lacks the heart thumping adrenalin inspiration of the current anthem.
     I ask my students if they like their anthem, and they all say "of course".  They are surprised to hear that I don't like my own very much.  To me the Canadian anthem also seems out of date, with it's gender bias (In all our sons' command?  What about the daughters?) and paranoia (All that standing on guard.  Just doesn't seem to fit an age of globalization.)
     I tell my Chinese students that I have learned to sing the words to their national anthem, but for me it will never have the resonance, the deep emotion, that it has for them.  For that, you need to grow up in China.

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Chinese idiom for the day: 你别瞪着鼻子上脸
(nǐ bié dèng zhe bí zi shàng liǎn  literally "don't get nose up face" ) = don't get your nose out of joint, don't get snooty, don't get your knickers in a knot

December 10, 2009 Further Exploration of "individualism"

As I posted yesterday, my students all gave me a very negative interpretation of "individualism", in response to the Chinese translation I found in my dictionary, 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì).  Then I was told that 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì) is just not the correct translation and it should be translated as 个体主义 (gè tǐ zhǔ yì), which is supposed to be neutral.  So this morning I tested 个体主义 (gè tǐ zhǔ yì) with my oral English class.  The result was identical to 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì), uniformly negative.  And today the negative got even more explicit, with one student saying "It's a bad thing", and another saying "It's against our country".
     Michael in the administration office tells me that the Chinese do have the concept of somebody acting altruistically against the group, but it seems this is not the generally accepted meaning of "individualism".  If this concept is in the culture, it isn't attached to the words "individualism" or "individualist".
     I asked my students where they got their understanding of the word.  One student told me that it is just part of their culture, that they were always told that following the leader and acting in accordance with the group was good, and that independent action is bad.  Another told me that this is in their political textbooks in school.  Wherever it comes from, it is pervasive.
     Over and over I'm told that the Chinese value harmony, 和谐社会 (hé xié shè huì - harmonious society, a phrase that has deep resonance for the Chinese.) above everything else.  They emphasize connection to the family, the group, the community, and the country, and do not value public discussion of decisions made by the leadership.  They see protest as destructive to their country, where we see it as essential to keeping our country healthy, strong, and on the right path.  For the Chinese it seems that argument or debate is not a process that leads to better decisions, but a process that leads to disharmony and violence.  Given the history of China, I can see their point.  But if my students are to understand my culture, they need to understand the meaning WE give to "individualism".
     This points up a very general problem with translation.  Words have a definition and a connotation.  With the definition, a translation will seldom go wrong.  If I think a car means an automobile, but it is translated into Chinese as 马 (mǎ = horse) then we have no problem saying that the translation is incorrect.  When I say car, I mean something with four wheels, not an animal with four legs.  But when it comes to the connotation on a word, things are not so easy.  Another culture might put a connotation on the word that is opposite to our understanding, or at least takes our understanding from neutral to strongly negative or positive.  We might have an identical definition for "tiger" as a large member of the cat family.  But one culture might see it as a dangerous predator that should be hunted down and killed.  Another culture might see it as an endangered example of charismatic mega fauna that must be protected. 
     It's easy to correct an interpretation that gives the wrong definition.  Connotation is something else again.

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Christmas is Upon Us Again

For me, Christmas is always bitter sweet.  It's my favorite time of year, and I love the feeling of warmth and fellowship that goes with the season.  But of course I'm far from home, and my memories of Christmas past, of family members now gone, of a magical childhood that held such excitement, all come back to me with the decorations.  I'm so thankful for my friends here in China, and of course for my wonderful fiancée.  Oh yes, and our dog.  I'm grateful for all of this.  Merry Christmas everybody.

For Christmas Day we're planning to combine a number of our classes and have a party.  We'll tell our students about our Christmas memories, teach them some carols, and have fun.  This was great last Christmas, and it can only get better this year.  We've had practice now. Next we'll be off to Metro to pick up some shortbread and sherry.  Maybe I'll make eggnog again this year.  I've got a great recipe.  This weekend we've been invited to Elaine's for a Hanukah celebration. I do love this time of year.   Merry Christmas

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Chinese word for the day: 个体主义
(gè tǐ zhǔ yì literally "individual doctrine") = best candidate so far as a translation of "individualism". My dictionary translates "individualism" into 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì literally "individual person doctrine") but that translation is always given a very negative connotation by my students, as you can see on the banner photograph at the top of this page.

December 9, 2009  Chinese understanding of "individualist"

After being told last week by my student, Frank, that "individualist" and "individualism" are always given a very negative interpretation by the Chinese, I thought I would test this with my students.  So for the past three oral English classes I have started the class with a fill in the blanks question:  An individualist is ______________.
     The results were very surprising.  Every student gave a very negative interpretation, the mildest of which was "selfish", but going into such elaborations as:  doesn't work well in a group, not a team player, wants to be the leader, wants to control everybody, won't listen to anybody else but does things his own way, insists that what he thinks is right, imposes his opinions on others, a showoff, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
     I introduced the students to our words for such people - egocentric, sociopathic, selfish, megalomaniacal, opinionated, self centered, uncooperative.  Then I explained that our interpretation of the word "individualist" is totally neutral.  An individualist might be all the things they attribute to the word, but could also be the the most noble of human beings, the most committed to the group and the community, and the most willing to sacrifice his or her own interests for the welfare of the group.
     I gave examples: 

What do you do when an English word is given a meaning in another language that is not the same as the meaning we give it?  The problem may be that the Chinese worldview does not hold our concept of "individualist".  The only people who are expected to act on their own beliefs are the accepted leaders.  I don't know whether this is true or not. 
     I asked my students to come up with a better Chinese word for "individualist" than 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì) and they came up with several candidates.

以 人主义 (yǐ rén zhǔ yì) using person doctrine

特例独行 (tè lì dú xíng)  special case insist on one's own way (student defined as "inventive, original")

自主 (zì zhǔ) act independently (student defined as "autonomy")

自我实现 (zì wǒ shí xiàn) self-realization; self-fulfillment (student defined as "realize individual value")

有主见的人  (yǒu zhǔ jiàn de rén)  know one's own mind person (student defined as someone who  has thoughts of his or her own and keeps the position unwavering. Someone who has principles in his life.)

独立 (dú lì) independent (student defined as "be independent")

人本主义 (rén běn zhǔ yì) human-centered thinking (student defined as "humanism")

Cinderella, one of my third year English majors, told me that their translation teacher had corrected a translation of "individualism" from 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì) to 个体主义 (gè tǐ zhǔ yì) which she says is neutral in moral connotation.  My dictionary doesn't list all four characters as one word, but the first two, 个体 (gè tǐ), mean individual and the second two, 主义 (zhǔ yì), mean doctrine.
     Possibly the real problem is simply that my dictionary has the wrong Chinese translation of the word "individualism".  So maybe it is unfair to say that the concept of individualism doesn't exist in the average Chinese worldview.  But all of this does point out the difficulty, and the dangers, of translation.

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Chinese word for the day: 分享
(fēn xiǎng literally "divide enjoy") = v. share

December 4, 2009  Culture and Language Discoveries

I'm always skeptical when I read some claim about language differences giving people a different world view. 
     For example, in Richard E. Nisbett's excellent and well researched "The Geography of Thought" I find this passage: "When the conversation turns to waterfowl, you can say "a duck", "the duck", or "ducks".  The last term is a generic one and the syntax tells you this.  It's normally obligatory to indicate whether you're speaking about an object or a class of objects, though sometimes the context can do the job. But in Chinese and other Sinitic languages, contextual clues can be the only kind of cues the hearer has to go on.  The presence of a duck that has just waddled over from a pond to beg for food, for example, would indicate that it is "the duck" one is talking about, rather than "a duck" or "ducks"."
      Rather sweeping extrapolations about the way Chinese people think are then generated from this kind of language detail.  Yet the basic observation seems flawed to me.  A Chinese speaker can certainly make a distinction between "this duck", "that duck", "some ducks", "all ducks" or "ducks in general".  But one of Nisbett's observations was recently brought to my attention by one of my students, who told me that the Chinese have no translation of the words "individualist" or "individualism" that does not have negative connotations.  And here Nisbett seems to be right on the money.  The Chinese often mis-translate "individualism" into "egocentricity" or "selfishness".  They just don't seem to have the western concept in their collectivist world view. 
     Today I talked about this in my oral English class, and tried to make clear that most westerners see the words "individualist" and "individualism" as morally neutral.  I used the anti-war protests of the sixties as an illustration.  To become a "draft dodger", one had to be an individualist and practice individualism.  One had to decide that his own sense of right and wrong should take precedence over the group decision.  To an individualist, "My country right or wrong" is absurd.  If your country is wrong, it's your patriotic duty to say something, to protest. 
     Many Americas saw the draft dodging anti-war protesters as "traitors" and "un-American".  But to many liberals they were the true patriots, willing to stand up for what they believed despite the very real sacrifices this would entail - separation from family and friends, flight from their home country, alienation from society, or time in prison. This can be seen as the very opposite of selfishness. 
      It seems unlikely that the Chinese will revise their understanding of  个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì), which is used for "individualism",  to bring it into line with our definition of the word.  I would really like to have a Chinese word that would express what "individualist" means to me, and 个人主义 (gè rén zhǔ yì) doesn't seem to do it.  How about 忘我个人主义 (wàng wǒ gè rén zhǔ yì), "selfless individualism"?   That's getting a bit long for the Chinese language tradition, and it doesn't preserve neutrality.  In English, an individualist may or may not be selfless.  If anyone can tell me how to express this idea in a word or two of Chinese, please let me know. 
     To understand Western culture, my students need a concept of "individualism" that does not imply selfishness.  It's one of our core ideas.

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Chinese word for the day: 自行车
(zì xíng chē literally "self go vehicle") = bicycle

November 30, 2009 One More Discovery in China

When I was a kid, we never used bike locks.  I think my sister lost a bike once to a thief, but I never did.  Bike locks were a separate thing you had to remember and use.  They were an inconvenience and a pain in the neck.  Not any more.  Here's the lock on my bike here in China:

Isn't that marvelous.  The lock is permanently attached to the bike.  Locking or unlocking is like sticking my key in a car ignition.  Quick and painless.  I'm sure they have these now in Canada, but it's been a while since I used a bike there so I didn't know about them until I came to China. 
     So many of the details of my world have improved since I was a child.  There's the big stuff, like laser eye surgery and the Internet and GPS and TV remote control and mobile phones and more information than the old Encyclopedia Britannica on a chip I could swallow.  But the simple things really impress me too.  Bikes had been around for a long time by the time I started to ride one.  You would have thought that the best possible bike lock would have already been invented and be in common use.  Not so.  Another example of a simple thing that is so much better than what we had before. 
     Note the rust in this picture.  After three years of daily use, my bike is now a beater.  That's fine with me.  The first thing Ruth and I did when we bought our bikes was ride them through mud and scratch up the paint.  I don't want a brand new bright and shiny bike.  It would be stolen for sure.

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Chinese word for the day: 难以置信
(nán yǐ zhì xìn literally difficult to believe) = unbelievable

November 28, 2009 Wrasslin' with Chinglish

I spend a lot of time answering student emails.  Not that I'm complaining.  It's my favourite way to interact with students.  My young friend Jackie Grasham (so named because he admires the writing of John Grisham but entered a spelling mistake when he chose his name.  Ah, the vagaries of fate!) has been working on a composition about going for a bike ride adventure.  He sent me his first draft and asked for help. I gave suggestions for a few sentences, was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task, and sent it back to him with some advice:

He sent me a second draft.  That prompted the following:

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Chinese word for the day: 正 (zhèng meaning right, straight, correct) 
This one calls for a bit of explanation.   All my other words of the day have had some poetic meaning in the character combinations, or interesting way of saying something that we English speakers would never discover.  But this one is different.  I've included it because... well, you know how prisoners in movies keep track of the date by scratching lines on the cell wall.  Like this:   The Chinese use the character zhèng for this purpose.  Zhèng has the following stroke order:   Five strokes.  So on the cell wall would indicate fifteen days of captivity.

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November 25, 2009  No it Wasn't H1N1

The flu alert has locked down the school.  I'm told the campus hospital is full, with students cluttering up the hallways.  Starting last Wednesday evening and slowly building, something nasty hit me hard.  Monday I was too sick to get out of the apartment.  I cancelled Monday and Tuesday's classes and stayed in bed for two days,  only getting out to make it to my Special Class last night.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't H1N1, but plenty bad enough.  Now I'm definitely on the mend, but I feel like I lost two days of my life.

Shanghai Weekend

Ruth's old high school friend, Doug, travels so much on business that he has a few frequent flier points he can squander.  So when he hit Shanghai for some meetings, he offered to put us up for the weekend at the Le Royal Méridien Shanghai, a five star hotel right in the heart of the city overlooking People's Square.

What makes a hotel a five star?  Fresh cut flowers in the room and an orchid in the bathroom for starters.

Once again I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves, though in this case my pictures do not do justice to the decadence of our weekend.  Thanks, Doug.

    
So this is how the rich folk live?  Not too shabby. I've stayed in worse places, and it's hard to believe we're in the
heart of a Chinese city in a developing country.

I've worked out in worse places too.
 

 
Before you can use a facility, you have to find it and inspect it.  So this is Ruth and Doug on the pool inspection tour. 
Plans are being made.

Lunch was more plebian fare.  What city are we in again?  I forget.
 

 
That's the famous pearl tower below us.

Shanghai is a beautiful city, especially if you can rise above it like this.

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Speaking of Fitness...

As promised last year, the school now has a fitness room set up in the basement of the new foreign teachers' apartments.  We're not going to be using it much, because we bought our own elliptical trainer,  but the facility is a nice addition to the foreigners' accommodations.  We do appreciate our administration here at Jiangnan University.

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Chinese word for the day: 气喘吁吁
(qì chuǎn xū xū literally "air pant puff puff") = breathe hard or pant

November 18, 2009 The Christmas Bursary Again

Two years ago,  Ruth and I decided that we had enough "stuff" in our lives,  and that neither of us really wanted or needed anything from the other for Christmas,  except maybe a hug and a kiss.  So we took our Christmas present money and put it into a bursary fund for Jiangnan University students.
       That was two years ago.  We did the same thing last year, and Professor Reid Mitchell tossed a bit more money into the pot.  When we got back from our weekend outing to Ningbo I found this letter in my inbox, reminding me that Christmas is just around the corner.

Wow,  What a letter.  Since receiving it I've had a great conversation with my new friend Chris Knight. I asked his permission to post his letter.  His response: "Of course you have my permission to mention this on your website. Maybe others will pick up on the idea and spread a little cheer themselves this Christmas."  So this was the kick I needed to post this announcement:

Please note: we do not give to finance any business ideas.

You don't need to be in desperate need to ask for money,  but please consider your situation.  If your family is doing okay, compared to other students, maybe there are students more in need than you.
     In past years we've been particularly touched by those students who asked for money, not for themselves but for a friend they knew had problems.

For the past two years, the Christmas bursary has become the most gratifying,  satisfying, and wonderful way to celebrate Christmas.  We got far more pleasure out of helping students who needed help than we ever could have had from any present.  So... we're doing it again.  There's a limit, of course, to how much we can contribute.  But if you are a student whose life, or the life of a family member or friend,  would be improved a lot by a small amount of money, please think about applying.

Among the recipients in past years year we gave:

             -To pay for a student's mother to see a doctor, pay part of siblings' tuition, and buy new
               clothes for parents.

             -To buy a blood pressure machine for a student's father and small Christmas gift for his girl 
               friend.

             -To buy books,  pay an English test fee, get a medical check-up for mother, and buy a
               bicycle for father.

             -So that a student could go home for Spring Festival

             -To pay the fees for an Oral English test and repay a debt.

             -To allow a student to focus on studying for exams instead of being forced to take a job.

             -To buy a student a train ticket home and pay end of term living expenses.

             -To help pay the air fare to allow a student to take his friend who was dying of
              cancer for a walk on the beach on Hainan Island.

None of these bursaries were huge amounts. The most we gave to any one student was 800 RMB. 

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The Weekend Outing to Ningbo and Yandang Shan

Each term (at least for the past three years) our administration has laid on an all expense paid outing to some scenic part of China, with side trips to museums to help us appreciate Chinese history and culture.  Last weekend the tour took us to Ningbo and Yandang Shan.  I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

These outings are always wonderful.  Just one of the many reasons we really like working at Jiangnan University.  Big thanks to Ms. Liu, Cherry, Jesse, Michael, and all the other hard working people in our administration.

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In Other News

I try to post everything I think might be of interest on this site, but there's no way I can keep up with everything.  Stuff happens. 

• Last Friday I gave up the right of way to a group of bike riding students who were cutting the corner at a campus intersection.  I stopped.  A student coming toward me at full speed went into panic mode, jerked left on the handlebars, then right, then went for the middle and smashed right into my bike.  I just spent 50 RMB ( $7.70 Canadian) at the local bike shop to get a new wheel.  That is one of the beauties of this place.  Repairs are cheap.  But for some time now I've been thinking of putting a "rules of the road" power point presentation together for the students here.  They don't know that rules exist.  Nothing like being smashed by a bike rider for providing an incentive.

• I've started my Special Class for the best English speakers on campus.  Already we've had two sessions, and I'm impressed with the enthusiasm.  Great bunch of people, these students.

• Wang Yijing and I are now having regular violin practice sessions on Wednesdays after our Chinese lesson.

• Tonight we're having dinner with Jim and Janet at their apartment.

• I've still got class prep to do for tomorrow, and I haven't been on the exercise machine yet today. All in all, life is full.

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Chinese word for the day: 小费
(xiǎo fèi literally "small fee")  = tip or gratuity

November 08, 2009 Translated Jokes Fall Flat

We had another Chinese corner last Friday.  That was exciting for us, and a good party, but maybe ho hum to write about again.  Three foreigners in attendance, plus about a dozen very helpful students.  Ruth came away feeling encouraged.  She had a couple of hours of speaking nothing but Chinese, and finds she can now communicate increasingly complicated ideas.   

I came away feeling less encouraged.  My communication still feels like baby talk, and my carefully prepared translations of English jokes fell flat.  Tough audience,  bad delivery, or bad jokes.  It's hard to say which.  Probably a combination of all three.  Here's one of my jokes:

I love this joke because it reminds me of life.  We are all falling from a very high place, and all of us are saying "Well, so far so good."  The splat is coming, but we have the ability to ignore it and be happy anyway.  The Chinese can say something the equivalent of "so far so good", but apparently it doesn't have the same resonance for them.  Or maybe my joke just isn't funny, even in English.  You tell me, okay.

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Have I Said it All Yet

There's lots going on, but I've posted most of it before.  Life settles into routines, even in China.  Studying Chinese and class prep evaporates our time, but don't seem worth documenting.  I'm spending a lot of time at this computer, preparing for my News Reading classes and putting together a power point presentation for the Special Class audition that I'll be holding on Tuesday evenings. Apparently I'm soon going to have a violin student. Nothing feels worth writing about, without long and tedious explanations. Last night we went downtown to the Blue Bar for a hamburger and a pina colada.  Same old same old.    All the stuff of a wonderful life here, but boring to share.

Okay, here's something to talk about.  With the Internet we can live in an English language bubble here in China.  The other night we watched a TED lecture.  Ruth has downloaded and saved all of them, and updates as new lectures are released each week. We watch one or two a night, just before bed, and these entertaining talks keep us informed about the cutting edge of social and scientific development.  One we watched recently featured Billy Graham.  I haven't listened to Billy Graham since I was a kid.  My mother watched his TV show religiously (so to speak).  It was a surprise to see him give a TED lecture, and he started his talk by commenting that he felt very out of place himself.  The old bible banger was as slick and charming as ever.  I actually felt some affection for him, as did the TED audience, obviously.  He is after all, now age ninety, an icon of American culture. 
     The Reverend tried to fit his sermon to the audience, and tie it in to modern technology and science, but as he warmed to his subject he gradually slipped into a very standard sermon about man and evil and the problems of this world that science, in his view, can't solve.  What struck me most was how archaic his ideas sounded to me.  I realized that the very concept of "evil" predates the relativistic world we live in now.  It's a man made concept that doesn't exist in nature.  I'm sure that to a mouse, a cat seems the epitome of evil.  To a Christian, a pagan can seem evil.  But evil and sin are not useful paradigms. 
     Billy Graham talked about changing man, and of course his answer to changing man is Christian faith in God and Jesus Christ.  But man has been formed by millions of years of evolution to be what he is.  The expectation that  he needs to change, or can BE changed,  is a fantasy.   It's a dangerous fantasy, that leads into all kinds of foolishness such as the attempt to repress the sex drive, which, along with the survival instinct, is one of our strongest built in drives. Without the sex drive we wouldn't be here. With a weak sex drive, the gorilla seems doomed. Yet religious people have done their best to suppress this drive, leading to everything from genital mutilation as a cure for masturbation (Thank you, Dr. Kellogg) to the creation of pedophiles by putting men with no sexual outlet in charge of orphans. 
     I'm happy to see that science is now looking at what we are, not with the expectation that we can be changed, but to understand why we behave as we do, and to find ways to direct our behavior toward goals we see as valuable, and away from such primitive manifestations as xenophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, tribalism, war and, yes, organized religion.  We will never get the results we want by acting against our nature. It seems to me that the organized religion that Billy Graham represents so perfectly can be seen as a huge social experiment that has proven this point.
     In another TED lecture, a neuroscientist named Jim Fallon talked about his research revealing that virtually all serial killers have damage to a certain part of their brains.  Now, which is more useful -  to talk about serial killers as morally corrupt and evil, and expect that conversion to Christianity will reform them, or to talk about them as defective organisms with brain damage?  I find it comforting to think that serial killers are not just normal people who make a bad moral choice, or strayed away from the Christian god.
     No doubt there are religious people who are altruistic because of their beliefs, but research seems to indicate that Christians are no more moral, nor more likely to be honest, than atheists.   I'm happy to see that research now focuses on telling us what we can expect of human beings, and suggesting ways we can direct our instincts toward positive goals. Let's leave guilt and sin, along with hellfire and damnation, to our primitive past.

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Chinese word for the day: 野餐桌
(yě cān zhuō literally "wild meal table") = picnic table

November 4, 2009 Questionable Science

In one corner we have what, until recently. has been a few maverick scientists plus big oil and coal with their unlimited budgets for lobbyists, commercials, funding "scientific" studies, hiring PR companies, and financing Astroturf organizations - all aimed at creating doubt about the role of human activity  in climate change. 

In the other corner we have legitimate scientists, wannabe scientists, people with no scientific credentials at all,  environmentalists and political activists all trying to build or defend reputations, get grant money, solicit donations, or get a share of the limited government funding for research.  There is no such thing as "pure science" untainted by human foibles.  Who do we believe?  Which way do we jump to get out of this particular frying pan?  Can we avoid the fire?  (Can this writer stop using these clichéd metaphors?)
     Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", impressed a lot of people and won him an Oscar. I became an instant and outspoken fan.  Vice President Gore has become the point man for the environmental movement.   Of course the point man is an obvious target for the other side, and shooting the messenger has always been a favourite tactic. 
      I believe that Al Gore is sincere.  I find him charming.  But I don't want to let the fact that I'm on his side blind me to the possibility that he could be wrong.  Science and government policy should not be decided by personality cults or popularity.

My friend Gary, a former teacher here, sent me the following link. 

http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

I read it all.  Every word.  The author describes the global warming crowd (my side, by the way) as "hysterics" and "hoaxers" and their work as "junk science".  Well if my side is doing junk science, this is right wing talk radio science, spackled with name calling, vitriol, sarcasm, and smug superiority.  The problem is we can't ignore the arguments.  Maybe calling the global warming alert a hoax and comparing it to the Piltdown man is going a bit far, but what about the science?  Did Al Gore make a huge mistake, and suck most of the world along with him?  Did he get the cause confused with the effect?  Is CO2 a result of global warming, and not the cause of it?  Is CO2 not a significant greenhouse gas?  Are carbon credits and capping carbon emissions a waste of time and a misappropriation of resources?
     I went off to Wikipedia and other sources to see what scientists are actually saying now, and what facts might have recently come to light.  You can spend your life following links on this one.  I don't believe that we have been the victims of a hoax, or that Al Gore is an insincere money grabbing politician  But if big oil or anybody else is out to create doubt, they are doing a great job of it.  I'm left decidedly undecided.
     And what if?  If Al Gore is just plain wrong, what does that mean?  Everything is okay?  Business as usual?  Let's continue to rape and pillage because global warming doesn't look as bad as we were lead to believe, and isn't our fault anyway?  Are there no limits to growth?  Can we continue the way we have been going?  Even if Al Gore's alarm bell was a mistake, aren't some of the initiatives that have come out of the whole global warming issue worth pursuing for their own value - clean energy,  clean water,  clean air.  Living in China makes me think they are.

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November 1, 2009  Hallowe'en and the Emperor Walks Again

Chinese word for the day: 把玩
(bǎ wán literally "grasp" plus "play") = fondle

One thing we miss here is handing out candies to kids on Hallowe'en and seeing all the costumes.  There's a possibility that one of Ruth's friends will set up a web cam in Winnipeg to let us enjoy this vicariously next year.  That would be fun, and our students would be able to tune it too if they are interested.  This year the best I could do is take the emperor's robe off our wall and wear it to deliver some Hallowe'en candy to an English corner.

This picture was taken before the bulk of the students showed up.  It was a well attended English corner,
with over a hundred students.  We had to move to a bigger room.

As usual we had a great time talking with the students.  We also enjoyed Michael's presentation about his SCUBA adventures and NASCAR race photography.  So many of the foreigners here have really interesting backgrounds.  Which figures, I suppose.  Only the more adventurous will teach in China.

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Chinese Corner at Our Place

You wouldn't think it would be hard to practice speaking Chinese in China, but it's next to impossible.  All of our students speak excellent English, and that's the language they want to practice with us.  Their English is so much better than our Chinese that we very quickly find ourselves using an English word, and then it's game over.  The rest of the conversation is in English.
     Those locals who don't speak English usually have a dialect or accent that makes their Mandarin next to useless to us.  So despite being surrounded by Chinese people who always speak their own language among themselves, it's very hard to get any of them to talk to us in 普通话 (Pǔ tōng huà, literally "common share speech"), the standardized Mandarin of China.

Now, thanks to the organizational initiative of our friend Fonzie (seated second from right front row), a number of students have started coming to our apartment every Friday evening to help us practice Chinese.  They are wonderful, patient teachers.  This week we even had three other 外国人 (wài guó rén - outside country person, foreigner) join us.  So maybe the Chinese Corner can become a regular event.  We try to make it a party, not a chore. 
     For this coming week I've written a little comedy dialogue, a Chinese version of "Who's on First", based on the fact that 没有 méi yǒu, meaning "not have", is the same pronunciation but different tones as 煤油 méi yóu, "coal oil" or "kerosene".  To say "do you have" you say 有没有 yǒu méi yǒu, "have not have".  My skit grows out of a foreigner going into a hardware store to ask for kerosene, 你有没有煤油 nǐ yǒu méi yǒu méi yóu, and the confusion that results.  Hopefully our students can help us learn to perform this with the correct tones.  Hopefully it will be funny, and fun.

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Chinese word for the day: 结果
(jié guǒ literally "form fruit")  = result

October 28, 2009  The Chinese Characters Graphics Problem

Last week I said that I wasn't going to post anything for a while because I wanted to fix some problems with my site graphics on the learning Chinese pages.  But... I've been too busy lately to get to them.  So if the graphics of Chinese characters look clipped to you, it may be because you are using Firefox or some other browser.  They look fine with Internet Explorer.  Fixing them for both browsers is going to take more time than I thought.

Congratulations to Echo and her Design Team

Echo sent me an email to explain why she missed one of my news reading classes.  She and her team went to Nanjing for a design competition. 

Here she is with his design team, and their design - second prize winners.  Congratulations Echo.

Small Improvements that Make a Difference

This campus is getting better and better.  For three years now I've been cursing the speed bumps.  I often have a my tin cup of tea in my carrier, and that means I have to either find the gap at the edge of the road or come to a stop to go over the bump.  Nobody in China walks on a sidewalk, and students seem to bunch together when they come to the speed bump, so that they all can go through the gap and won't have to lift their feet.  None of them spare a thought to the bike riders.  It's a petty complaint, but then all my complaints are petty. 

Now every speed bump on campus is being replaced with these ones with generous gaps for bikes.  It may not seem like much, but it makes a difference.

Editors at Work

One of the Chinese teachers asked me to go over the English translation of an article about the new Wuxi Water Town Eco-museum.  When I took my first pass at the document,  all fourteen pages of it, there were many sentences in the original translation that I couldn't understand at all.  Translation software has a long way to go before it works for Chinese.

So this turned into a collaboration between myself and Jin Bo, initially at a campus restaurant but soon back in our apartment on the computer, to find the true meaning of the Chinese, and get it accurately translated. 
I really enjoy this kind of work.  It's like solving a puzzle combined with a treasure hunt as we try to clarify the meaning and find the perfect words.

Violins in China

When I came to China, it never crossed my mind that my Chinese teacher might also be a pretty good violinist. 

I'm teaching Wang Yijing the old English melody, "Ash Grove" so that we can do the harmony as a duet.

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Another Birthday in China

I thought I had some pictures of the food fight that ended our party at the restaurant, but I guess I was too protective of my camera to shoot any.  A great party. Thanks folks.

When Overwhelmed is an Understatement

Winkle delivers live crabs and chestnuts

The live crabs are very expensive here.  Winkle's mother brought this gift for us from her hometown,
along with a bag of chestnuts.

  
The warmth, hospitality, and friendliness of our Chinese friends continues to amaze us.

Chinese word for the day: 静夜思
(jìng yè sī literally "silence of the night thought/longing") = nostalgia

October 17 Later in the Day, Just Had to Mention....

You know the world is getting flat when you eat Mexican food in an Australian restaurant* in Wuxi, China, while listening to Canadian singer Anne Murray cover Hank Williams classics.

*Ronnie's Australian Bar and Ned Kelly's Kitchen, near Nan Chan Si.  Really good Western food.  Can't tell it from home, especially with Anne Murray on the speakers.

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Chinese word for the day: 乡愁
(xiāng chóu literally "hometown worry") = homesickness

October 17, 2009  Sorry, No New Posts for a Week or So

I've known for some time that my graphic Chinese characters do not display properly in browsers such as Firefox.  They are clipped and don't show the whole character. 
     I've finally decided to do something about this, but it's going to take a long time because there are hundreds of such graphics in the learning Chinese portion of this site, and fixing each one turns out to be a complicated procedure.  So I'm not going to update anything on the homepage unless something truly remarkable happens.  Please come back in a week or so, or wander around in my archives. They are extensive after three years of additions.

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By the way, if you see anything amiss on this site - pictures that don't display, links that don't work, or just mistakes or stupidities - please take a few seconds to click on the comment link to the blog and let me know.  It's faster than sending me an email.

Possessed by the Devil*

Since we bought the exercise machine our numbers have been steadily moving up.  At first I thought I'd never break 300 calories in a half hour workout.  Then in the attempt to break 400 I accidentally hit over 500.  My record until today was 647, so of course I've been aiming at breaking 650.  But when the timer hit 0, the calorie counter was at 666.  I think the machine is trying to tell me something.

     I only managed to set this new personal best record by stopping every five minutes and letting my breathing and heart rate get back closer to normal,  which takes about a minute.  I'm justifying this by calling it sprint training,  known to increase endurance.
*I don't believe there is any significance to this, of course.  It's just a number, and an excuse to post some whimsy..

Chinese word for the day: 绕口令
(rào kǒu lìng literally "coil mouth command") n. tongue-twister
example: 四十四只石狮子  (sì shí sì zhǐ shí shī zi note the tones) 44 stone lions

October 15, 2009 Science in Real Life

Since we bought the exercise machine, back in February right after the Spring holiday, we've been using it every single morning that we've spent here in our Jiangnan University apartment.  I've been doing my own little science experiment.

Double click the picture for the video

The hypothesis - if I exercise every single morning for half an hour, and really get my breathing going and work up a good sweat, I'll lose my middle age pot belly and have the body of a teenager again.  That was the theory.  The experiment was to do this, and check in on the results.
     Sad to say, the results are now in.  Burning what the machine counts as five to six hundred calories every morning has not given me the six pack I'd like to have.  Sure, Ruth and I both feel great after our showers.  We both have lots of energy.  I run up the stairs past the zombie students who have barely entered their twenties.  And who knows what kind of a bay window I'd be packing around without the morning workout. But in terms of the aesthetics of my body, I must say that this doesn't seem to be doing very much.  As my old friend and body shaping expert, Yvonne Cournoyer, told me exercise will help, but if you want to lose fat you need the right diet.
     I know what the right diet is.  I pretend to be on it most of the time, but I'm not strict enough and I know that too.  I'm fond of the Breezers (Bacardi rum alcopop, loaded with sugar) and the butter in my mashed potatoes. 
     My father used to talk about a teacher he had during his brief years in school, a man with a big red nose.  His teacher would enter the classroom, twist his nose vigorously in two directions, and announce in a loud voice:  "Boys, be stern with yourselves.  Be stern with yourself and in twenty or thirty years you will command great respect."
     My sixty-second birthday is coming up in a few days.  I'm starting to think that I just might be past my best before date.  Maybe I can talk myself into being stern with myself.  Is it too late to start? 

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Fall is coming to Wuxi.  The weather has cooled down, the humidity has dropped, and today we have a perfect temperature and clear blue skies, so rare for this part of China.  I rejoice, even as I anticipate the coming winter.  At least we have right now.  And now is wonderful.

October 10, 2009 Foreign Expert Evaluation

Yesterday I received an email from the administration requesting me to fill out an online evaluation form that includes a personality test, a world knowledge test, a written essay, and a resume. 
     I took a look at the personality evaluation test and freaked out.  It's written with a lot of Chinglish, and I can't believe it has any validity as a measure of my personality.  I protested.  I said that I am not happy putting information up on the Internet that will follow me wherever I go in China.
     Here's an administration response that went out to everybody today:

Here's my test result for the psychological evaluation.  I scored 39.  The test doesn't say whether this is 39 out of 40, or 39 out of 100, or 39 out of 500.  I'll admit that I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the questions, mostly because I have no idea what answers whoever invented the test thinks are better than the other choices.

I find it fascinating that I got a high (higher?) score for Emotional Stability, but a low score for Extent of Mental Health.  (I suppose it is possible to be emotionally very stable while at the same time being crazy.  But who makes this judgment, and based on what?) The low score for Confidence and Inspiring Capacity is also interesting.  Do I come across to my students as a guy who lacks confidence?  I'd be interested in reading student comments on this.

Ruth just read this, and came up with a completely different interpretation.  By her reading, the report isn't dividing MY test score into these categories and telling me where I excel or show a deficiency. By her reading, this is telling me that a high score indicates Heart Endurance, Sense of Achievement, Emotional Stability and a low score indicates Extent of Mental Health, Confidence, Inspiring Capacity, Comprehensive Analysis Ability, Response Ability .  But this way of reading the results makes no sense to me at all.  Does a low score indicate Confidence, or do they really mean "lack of confidence"..  I think I'll stick with my way of reading the results, but who really knows.  It's unclear to say the least.

The Chinese leadership was trying to clean up Chinglish before the Olympics. so I take it they'd like to present a professional face to the outside world, yet here's an official government homepage, directed at the English speaking community, with some very, shall we say, unconventional English in it.  This is a pity.  There must be a few native English speakers in this country who would be happy to help.

Here are my results for the Basic Knowledge Test.   

This doesn't surprise me because I skipped all the math questions and didn't pay a lot of attention to the other ones.  On the other hand this did surprise me because I expected a much lower score..

After class today I thought I'd see if I can take this test again,  with the intention of pulling up Google and a calculator to see if I can get a perfect score.  (There's nothing on the site that says you shouldn't do this, so I take it that it's an "open book" exam.  If you can use Google and a calculator within the time limit,  that seems fair.) No such luck.  Attempting to take the test again brought up this error message.

So I'll have to wait for six months before I can repeat this test.  Be warned.  If you want to take the test seriously, do it on the first time through.

There are a number of ways to look at this evaluation.  One is that this has no meaning at all in the grand scheme of things.  Go with the flow.  Everybody has to do it, so just grit your teeth and fill in the test form.  I'm not here to criticize the government or make trouble for anybody. 
     The administration of this university has no power in this situation.  This is a requirement for getting a foreign expert certificate, and without that you won't get a visa.  So, simply understand the situation and make up your own mind.

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Go ahead.  Fill out the tests.  You can register with a temporary user name, just to see what it's all about.  Let me know what you think.  Let's hear from you, folks.

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October 9, 2009 Computer Translation - Another Threat to Language

My News Reading class had been discussing the film "Wag the Dog", and the students were to send me their opinion about whether events in the film could happen in real life.  Here's an excerpt from one email:

This made me suspicious and prompted the following exchange:

I'm reminded of something I read back during the cold war, when Americans were trying to develop a Russian translation machine.   One way to test such a machine is to input a sentence in one language, then input the translation and see how closely the result matches the original.  The sentence they input was "The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak."  What came back was "The wine will get you drunk but the meat is tasteless."

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October 7, 2009 Major Update Due and Coming Soon

We're back from our two days in Suzhou.  I'll have a report and pictures up soon.  But for now, here's a comment on the blog that deserves to be pulled up on to the front page.

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October 2, 2009

Chinese word for the day: 万花 筒
 (wàn huā tǒng literally "thousand flowers tube") = kaleidoscope

I often find Chinese very poetic when I learn the literal meaning of words.  After all, what does "kaleidoscope" mean?  It's an invented marketing word, a nonsense word, an attempt to sound scientific, with Greek roots that are meaningless to us.  How much more descriptive is "thousand flowers tube".  Someday I'll write a poem in English but using the literal Chinese translations of our words, just to see if it comes out as poetic as I imagine it will.

Shyness, a National Affliction

Once again I return to the subject of shyness.  My students all have huge English vocabularies.  What they need is confidence and practice speaking English, and for this they are their own worst enemies.  Here's an excerpt from a student's assignment, and my response:

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On a personal note:  I set a new personal best on the exercise machine this morning.  657 calories in 30 minutes.  (MUSIC UP: the theme from "Rocky") These are probably not "real" calories, but we think they give us a good relative measure of how we do from day to day.  A few months ago, the goal was to break 400.

September 30, 2009 A Song That Bridges Cultures

Chinese word for the day: 难怪
(nán guài literally "difficult strange") = no wonder

This is the most performed of our Chinese songs.  As you can see, it has a lot of verses with few repetitions, so it was not easy to learn.  I'll tell you why it's my favorite song after you check out the lyrics.

It's probably obvious why I like this song.  Every line in it resonates with memories of my own childhood.  I'm sure my students, especially the ones who have never talked to a foreigner before,  think that westerners are very different from "Chinese people".  So I like to sing this song for them and then let them know that we all share the same experiences, and that at the deepest level we are one and the same people.

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The Welcome Dinner 2009

Last night the Foreign Languages Department once again took us to a very fancy restaurant for a welcoming feast to celebrate mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, this time to a nearby five star hotel where the buffet was very fresh with a combination of fabulous sashimi, grilled to order western food, including a reasonable coffee, and delicious local specialties such as Wuxi Pai Gu (Wuxi style spare ribs).  It never ceases to amaze me.  Five years in China and I'm still tasting things I've never seen before.  Last night it was taro roots. The way they were presented at this buffet, you peel off the thin bark like skin and dips the starchy core in sugar. Not something I'd go out of my way to find, but interesting. 
     I'm sure everybody is getting tired of me going on and on about all the dinners we get invited to, so I'm going to just say thanks, once again, to Ms. Liu and her staff.  Dinner was, as usual, just delicious.

     One thing I do want to mention though is something Jim, the retired Supreme Court of California judge said to me.  He remarked that this is the best job he's ever had. Now, I assume that a Supreme Court judge in California is reasonably well paid, and that the work is not without some serious social and financial perks.  So hearing him say this was a surprise. I thought I was the only person who felt this way, and lots of people have accused me of being in denial and secretly pining for a comeback in the film business.  So it was great to have Jim confirm my opinion of this gig.  It also made me feel good to hear fellow teachers talk shop with such enthusiasm.  Yep.  Best job I ever had.  You too, eh Jim.  Good on ya.

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September 29, 2009 Happy Birthday PRC

Chinese word for the Day: 看不见
(kàn bu jiàn literally "look not see") = invisible

Last night we were treated to a reception in honor of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.  A few speeches, mercifully short, some acrobatic and dance performances that were quite charming, and the usual delicious Chinese food.

Our table companions included a Chinese gentleman who has spent two years in New Zealand and completed his education in England and now works for the Foreign Affairs Office in Wuxi.  A very interesting man to talk to about China's position in the modern world, and China's attitudes to such things as the Internet and Facebook.
     We also had a chance to meet Jim and his wife Janet, two new teachers here at Jiangnan University.   Jim is a retired California Supreme Court judge.  His wife has her Masters in something, but I didn't find out what yet.  Though we teach at the same institution, we hadn't had a chance to meet because the welcoming dinner was postponed.  That dinner will happen this evening.
    So this is yet another perk of this job.  Where else in the world would I be able to talk to a Chinese diplomat about Chinese foreign policy and ask a retired Supreme Court judge about the post 9/11 changes to American law.  It was comforting to hear that, in his opinion, the alarmists are overstating the case about the dangers to the U.S. constitution and the erosion of civil rights brought on by the Homeland Security Act.  According to Jim, Habeas Corpus is not dead in America.  He should know.

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September 27, 2009 Another Legacy From Mao

Chinese word for the Day: 歌德派
(gē dé pài literally "song + virtue/morality/ethics/kindness/heart + group/faction") = n. Pollyanna

It's so hard for a foreigner to really appreciate why things happen here.  National Day is coming.  This is the 60th anniversary of Communist rule in China.  The government is anticipating protest, and preparing for it. This means that the guards at our gate are more diligent.  Yesterday my driver was stopped at the North gate and told he had to go to the East gate, a mile away, to get on to the campus.  To us this seems incomprehensible.  Why on earth do they make us waste the gas when my apartment is just two blocks from the North gate.  What possible benefit could there be to restricting that beautiful wide road to one lane with their accordion barricade, and hassling everybody who goes in or out?
     We're planning a trip to Suzhou, but booking a room at the university was a problem because no visitors are being allowed.  Again, such a situation is incomprehensible to a foreigner.  What has changed?  Why is anything different from the last time we went to Suzhou?  National Day is the reason.  Something we hardly notice.

What China needs, if I could presume to know,  is a period of healing and reconciliation, something akin to the process that South Africa went through, is going through, after apartheid.  But Mao poisoned the water for that kind of process.  He did what he called "inviting out the snakes".  There was a period when criticism of the administration was encouraged.  That brought out a great groundswell of constructive protest by sincere patriots who were heartbroken at what was happening to their country and their culture.  The protests were carefully controlled and contained, so that the criticism didn't spread very far.  And then Mao initiated a great purge.  Anybody who had voiced concerns, no matter how polite and respectful, about his policies,  was severely punished.  Many lost their lives.  So I don't expect any but the most disgruntled or unbalanced to get involved in protest here.
     We in the West value dissent.  We feel it makes our country stronger and keeps our government at least a little bit honest.  The Chinese value 和谐实惠 (héxié shíhuì, "harmonious society".  The first part, harmonious, has deep resonance for them with all kinds of implications and associations.)  We might too if we had their history.

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Another Night of Performing Waiguo

Last night we sang a couple of songs for the English Flying Bar (The club for students who want to improve their English.  Don't you just love the name?) opening party.

Then we crossed the hall to drop in on the Muslim ethnic minorities party and were treated to some great Mongolian, Uighur, and Cossack dance and music.

Many of these students are from Xinzhang, where the recent riots claimed many lives,  and Tibet.  We were pleased to learn that they don't hold the Han Chinese students in any way responsible for the troubles back home,  and tell us that they get along well with their Han Chinese friends.  In response to a question, "Do you think of yourself as Chinese?" the student looked very surprised.  She replied "Yes, of course."  This is comforting.

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September 27, 2009 Life in a Bubble

I responded to one blog comment from a reader yesterday with a line from a favourite Robert Burns poem, "To a Louse" - "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"  
     This morning I realized that this is exactly what the power of the Internet gives me.  When I splash my life up in public and invite anonymous response from the world at large, I get a hint of how the world sees me.  Sometimes the reflection that comes back is not as flattering as I might wish.
     It's a well known phenomenon for expats in China.  China burnout.  We come here all full of enthusiasm and excitement.  Everything is fresh and new.  We're treated like visiting rock stars or royalty.  We're made to feel special and loved.  We get used to it.  All too easy to turn into an insensitive, judgmental prig.  But being a visitor is very wearing.  We know that, were we on the other side of the equation, we would have all kinds of resentments of the foreigners, of their privilege and money and experience of the wider world.  We are aware of a very faint undercurrent of anger among the Chinese, which really only shows up in blog postings on expat sites.  There are some young people here who actively HATE English.  Wouldn't you if you were being told constantly that your language was not the language of power and success, but you didn't feel like you were any good at the foreign language, and couldn't really hope to get better at it?  Wouldn't you if you'd been brought up on the story of the Opium War, Japanese atrocities, and Mao's famine blamed on foreigners?  Sometimes I'm amazed that they tolerate us at all.
     When I first came to China I was determined not to become "an old China hand", defined as a bloated alcoholic with a twenty-six year old Chinese "girlfriend" who has been in China for seven years and only learned five words of Chinese.  I was determined to give a good impression of my country, Canada, and my culture, and build on the great reputation established by Dr. Norman Bethune and Da Shan (Mark Rowswell from Ontario, the most famous westerner in China).  I was determined to be of value to my students, whom I consider to be the smartest people in China and future leaders of this country, and by extension to be of value to China.  I was determined not to get trapped in the "expat ghetto", hanging out with foreigners and complaining about the way things are here.  I was determined to "go with the flow", accept whatever seems to be the cultural norm, and learn as much as I can about China and the world.  Sure, this is all pretentious vanity, but that's just who I am.
     Another blog comment said, "You've been in China forever..." and that set me back a bit.  No, it's only been five years.  I just got here.  I've only scratched the surface.  After studying Chinese for those five years, every day, I still turn on the TV and hear words, not sentences or ideas.  But I suppose, to somebody who has never been to China, or been here for a three week tour of the terra cotta warriors and the three gorges dam, five years makes me an old China hand.
     And now the question:  How long do I have to live in a country before I can feel at home?  And feeling at home means that if something annoys me I can let my feelings be known.  In a restaurant, how long before I can complain about the table full of chain smokers next to me turning the air blue?  How long before I can express disgust when somebody spits on the carpet in the hotel lobby?  How long before I can feel some righteous indignation over a mobile phone that was not what it was pretending to be?  It's a rhetorical question of course.  The answer is never.  I won't live that long.  I'm a foreigner here.  Smile.  Go with the flow.

I'm not going to try to justify my behavior with the shop keeper over that phone.  There are two sides to the story, and I can see his very clearly.  I'm a little ashamed of getting sucked into the theater of the situation.  I'm a little ashamed of being, for that time, the ugly foreigner.  I posted the incident mainly to warn other foreigners about the knockoff products, and to let them know that they can't expect a refund if they are not happy.  (I suppose nobody but the terminally naive really needs that warning.) Part of the problem was that I didn't buy the phone on the street, from the guy selling Rolex watches.  I bought it in what appeared to be a modern department store, from a shop keeper who gave me a receipt. I would have accepted the offer of repair if the phone had been a real Nokia.  But... well, enough about that. 
     I want to thank my readers for pointing out my attitude problem.  Help me keep my balance here, folks.  Sometimes it ain't easy.

And now I actually have some real work to do.  Time to get the class prep done.

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September 26, 2009 Caveat Emptor  (Buyer Beware)

I'm back from the downtown phone store.   Did I get satisfaction?  Well, no.  Voices were raised.  Panda and I took turns playing good cop bad cop.  The booth manager was not interested in returning my money. His position was that the phone could be fixed.  My position was that I didn't want it, fixed or not.

Mr. Chen and Panda argued with him on my behalf with endless patience.  All the while I was thinking, my time is worth more than this.  I found myself with a choice.  Walk away empty handed, or pay more money and get another phone.  I'm not feeling like I won this one, though Panda assures me that the new phone is worth the money..  I paid another 600RMB for what appears to be a real Philips, but a very basic phone.  I'm back to buttons.  It will be a while before I go for a touch screen again.

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September 26, 2009 Apologies to Nokia 不好意思

In my earlier post I ranted about the failure of my new mobile phone, and noted that I had thought Nokia was a good brand.  Well, I'm sure Nokia IS a good brand.  My phone is not a Nokia.  It's a shanzhai knockoff of Nokia.

This phone looks real.  In fact, it looks perfect.  It was beautifully packaged, just like the real thing, and worked well enough for a week to have me fooled. I did wonder why it was so cheap, and now I know.  I'm taking it back this morning and looking for an O that doesn't have a split down the center.

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The Man in China Blog Policy Changes

As fast as I announce a policy, I find I have to change it.  I'm not going to approve everything that people put up on the blog.  If it doesn't relate to something I've posted, or have something interesting to say about China, it won't get approved.  Especially if the tone is aggressive and confrontational.  People can throw their cut and paste Internet junk someplace else.

September 26, 2009 Frustrations of Life in China (or anywhere)

We're planning a trip to Suzhou for the coming holiday.  Two days ago I went to the campus ticket office to buy our tickets, only to be told I couldn't buy them yet.  Come back tomorrow.  This wasn't really a surprise.  It's common in China to be told you can't buy tickets until the week before the train is scheduled to roll.  Who knows why.  It's like planning ahead is a bad thing.  Sometimes I think I've been in China too long if I let this kind of thing annoy me, but today.... well, my excuse is below.

This was not what it looked like when I was in line.  The lineup went back to the street.

     Today I returned, and once again waited in line, only to be told the same thing.  What's with the Chinese train system?  I could buy our tickets to go to Suzhou, on October 4.  I just couldn't buy tickets to return on October 5.  Talk about the mysteries of China, this is a big one. 
     So I bought our tickets to go to Suzhou.  I guess we'll wait in line at the train station to buy the return tickets.  Sheesh.

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The Touch Sensitive Screen That Isn't

Now my excuse for losing my usual cool:  I've got to return my new phone.  Don't you just hate it when this kind of petty hassle happens? I thought Nokia was a reliable brand, but there is nothing more frustrating than a touch sensitive screen deciding that it isn't sensitive at all.  Sheesh again. 

It was while standing in line for the second time to buy train tickets that I tried to use this phone, but the touch screen would do nothing.  In frustration I stabbed the screen a bit too hard with the stylus, and cracked it. Now we'll see what they say when I take it back where I bought it. This is what amplified my reaction when I was told that I couldn't buy tickets until tomorrow.  I hate to raise my voice, but today I'm afraid I lost it a bit.

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September 25, 2009 Old Dog Learns New Trick

I learned something this week, and learning it made me very aware of a tactical blunder in my teaching.  If my goal is to lead my students to a new understanding of a subject, and have them deal with information with an open mind, it's counter-productive to ask them to close their minds before my lecture.  But that's what I did.  Here's how.
    For my News Reading class,  I posted an article from Reader's Digest for my students to download and read.  It presents a "middle of the road" policy position in a middle of the road magazine, and I profoundly disagree with it.  But I thought I was being clever.  I asked my students to send me an email telling me whether they agreed with the author or not.  Predictably, they all did agree with the author, and parroted back the article's main points and conclusion.  My plan was to show them how very wrong the author was, and by implication how naive and foolish they were to agree with him.
     Then I read, in the book "Mistakes Were Made -(but not by me) - Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, about the theory of cognitive dissonance.  I realized what I had done.  It's very obvious now, and rather embarrassing.

Cognitive Dissonance

This is the term for what happens when we try to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time.  It makes us very uncomfortable.  We want to resolve the conflict in our brains.
     As an example,  suppose you think of yourself as a really nice person, a kind person, a benevolent person,  a really good guy.  Then you do something mean to somebody - belittle them, make them feel bad, hurt them in some way.  Only a mean person would do that.  So now you have cognitive dissonance.  The self image you have that says you are a nice person is in conflict with your actions. 
     There are two ways to solve this conflict. The first is to change your mind about whether you are a nice person, accept that you are not a nice person, and decide to live with this new identity.  But most people don't want to do this.  We want to believe that we are nice.  So the second way to resolve the conflict is the one we usually resort to - we justify and rationalize.  In this example, the justification goes like this: I'm a nice person, and I hated to do that.  But that other person really deserved it.  They are so horrible.  In fact, I was doing them a kindness by being mean to them.  Maybe they will learn a lesson and become a better person.  Actually, when I think about it, what I did was the kindest thing I could do for them.
     Now, the thing about cognitive dissonance is that the more committed a person is to an idea or position, the more one has adopted it as their own, the harder it is to change it when presented with new evidence.  This is why religious people can believe things that no rational person would believe for a moment.  It's part of their identity.  The more we have invested in a belief, by spending time on it or telling others about it, or just repeating it to ourselves, the harder it is to change it. 
     By asking my students to tell me whether they agree or disagree with that article, I was telling them to take a position.  Once they had taken that position, anything I said in class that refuted their position would cause cognitive dissonance.  They might change their minds, but it 's much more likely that they would refuse to hear my arguments, and would stick to their position even if they can't articulate a reason why.  And this is what I'm seeing happen with a lot of the students.
     So in future, rather than asking the students whether they agree or disagree with the author, I'm going to ask them whether they can find any flaws in the author's logic.  (There are lots of flaws in this author's logic.  In fact, his "logic" isn't logic at all. It's all statements of opinion as if they were facts, emotionally loaded rhetorical devices, and arguments by analogy that simply do not apply. The article was written in 1990 and already history has proven him wrong.) That way I'm asking them to look and think about the argument style, and inviting them to criticize the author.  I'm asking them to read critically instead of inviting them to close their minds.
     Live and learn, I guess.

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September 21, 2009 Name this Snake

I don't mean give it a name like Charlie or Fred.  We need to identify this snake. 

This is not a high resolution picture, but I think we can see red stripes on this snake. 

The head of HR (Human Resoures) at a multi-national company plant in Nanjing contacted me recently.  They are finding snakes on the company property.  They want to know whether there is any danger to their staff, whether the snakes are venomous, and what to do with them. 
     My first guess is that this snake is harmless, a Chinese equivalent of our garter snakes back home.  If anybody knows different, please let me know.  And if anybody out there can identify this snake and tell me a bit about it, I'd be very grateful.
     I'm extremely pleased that simply killing the snakes is not the first option.  In fact, I've volunteered to make a trip to Nanjing to show their staff how to safely handle a snake.
 

We've seen a snake like this before in Nanjing.  In a park,  dead beside the road.

While posting this item today, I remembered that we saw a dead snake in May of 2008 in a park in Nanjing.  In response to posting it on my site, somebody named Matt sent me this email:

So this probably settles the issue.  I'm waiting to hear back from the HR person in Nanjing, to learn whether this looks like the same kind of snake.

September 20, 2009 My Favourite Chinese Poem

Here's a poem that most people in China have memorized.  If I start to recite it in class, the whole class joins in.

I'm not sure what resonance this poem has for Chinese people.  Aside from the vivid images (A sun leaning on the mountain is either rising or setting.  Sunset for the Chinese is symbolic of old age. But this is still a white sun.) for me it speaks to trying to see the big picture,  trying to gain understanding. To hear a reading of this poem by William, our former Chinese teacher, just click here.

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September 19. 2010 A Blog Policy Statement

I'm new to blogging.  I've had this site for years, but I always resisted sticking a blog on it.  I figured if people want to say something on the Internet they could get their own site.  Now, of course, many can say something on this Internet without getting their own site, through Facebook, which is currently blocked in China, much to the chagrin of just about everybody.  My students who were making foreign friends and practicing their English on Facebook are just as cut off as I am.
     My first comment thread was about this issue.  I approved every comment, in spite of a friend back in Canada triggering Godwin's law.

Mike Godwin, author of the eponymous law.

I intend to approve everything, even if  it's racists, sexist, or excessively rude without justification (I'm trying to keep this site family friendly, though you can find the F word on it if you look hard enough.).  I will delete a post that has a high probability of getting my site shut down and possibly getting me kicked out of the country.  But generally there's enough censorship in China without me adding to it.  Turns out I like to hear from my readers.  Bring it on, folks.

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Adventures in Dog Ownership in China

We had visitors last night, a dozen or so students who wanted to practice their English, and one who wanted to offer me a game of xiang qi. (ended in a tie after a hard battle).  When our guests left, our dog left with them.

-Ruth Anderson photo

     Ruth didn't notice that the dog was gone for maybe five minutes.  Sometimes she (the dog, not Ruth) hides under the couch when fireworks go off or something scares her, or just when the mood strikes.  Ruth got out a flashlight to check.  We searched.  Then we expanded the search to the great outdoors.  Then I called my xiang qi partner who told me he had seen the dog run down the stairs when they left. He thought she had gone down the road toward the campus North gate.  He joined the hunt.  Ruth and I raced all over the campus on our bikes.  I was rather amazed at my level of anxiety.  Not a sign of GouGou anywhere.  My student friend called me again to say that the guards at the gate had not seen her.  I decided to see if she had gone home on her own, and yes, there she was waiting at our door.
     I suppose this is an anti-climax for my story.  And I know what some of you (in the Western world, especially my brother, Ed.) are thinking.  Well, forget it.  Our dog is licensed and tagged and implanted with a high tech chip that reads out a number if she is scanned.  Having her go astray here is no different from her going astray in Canada.  In fact, given the coyote population in B.C., she was probably safer in China.  I'm sure Sheila will agree with me on this.*

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*Sheila's wonderful little dog, Hero, a Shih Tzu I think, was lured to a horribly gory end by a pack of criminal coyotes in Peachland, B.C..

Foreign Devil* Disrespecting Historical Sites

This just in from Joe, a former teacher here at Jiangnan University.  We miss you, Joe, in spite of everything.

*totally justified in this case, obviously.

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September 17, 2009 China Looks Bad to Foreigners. Again.

This is the first time I have had anything even slightly critical to say about China.  But China has now done something that I don't like, and I'm sure all other foreigners feel the same.  It makes China look very bad to us, and this is a great pity. 

September 13, 2009 The Endless Birthday Officially Over

Ruth's birthdays are becoming like those Gypsy weddings that go on for a week.  Last weekend we had our private dinner at the downtown Japanese restaurant.  Last night we had a small circle of friends join us for a duck dinner at the Hundred Noodles Restaurant in Shi Tang Jie, the little village now engulfed by the urban sprawl of Wuxi, near Jiangnan University.

Not that I mind at all.  It's great to get together with our friends and it's fun acting like a big shot.  Just to give you some idea of the prices here, Ruth's birthday cake, from a bakery on campus, cost me 158 RMB ($24.91 Canadian), a price that surprised me and seemed very high. 

The dinner for eleven, with delicious duck, farm raised frog, chicken soup,  tomato fried eggs, shredded potato dish, two different tofu dishes, a beef dish, and a fancy fish dish (above right) in a private, smoke free room (until the plastic candle gadget on the cake malfunctioned and filled the place with plastic fumes), came to a total of .... wait for it.... 209 RMB ($32.95 Canadian).  Amazing.

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So Easy to Criticize China from the Outside

This morning a friend send me a notice that had been sent to her by an organization called the International Fund for Animal Welfare, protesting the culling of dogs in Qin Huang Dao, Hebei Province. 
     The language in this protest flier is emotional. Dogs are not just killed they are "slaughtered" or "beaten to death", and the link included pictures to illustrate what was described as "horrifying scenes of cruelty".  It included a request to send a protest to the Chinese Ambassador in your country, and a plea for money.   Below is my reply to this message:

To those who are quick to criticize China, please consider this:  in virtually all Western countries it is still perfectly legal to cut off part of an infant boy's penis for no medical reason.  Maybe there are things at home we should protest.

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September 11, 2009 Chinese Phrase of the Morning

鸡蛋碰石头 (jī dàn pèng shí tou) Literally "egg meets rock".  This very descriptive idiom is used for an enterprise that is doomed to failure or a quixotic charge into futility.
The character 碰 (pèng) has several meanings, giving this phrase a certain richness:
 v. ①touch; knock against ②meet; encounter; run into ③take a chance; explore

September 10, 2009 Teacher's Day and it's Showtime

Michael picked us up at noon today to drive us to the new Municipal Hall where we waited our turn to entertain the full house audience.  We watched the main show from the sidelines, and an incredible show it was.

We sang our favorite Chinese song, "Tong Nian" (Childhood).  I'm not sure it was our best performance, but the audience seemed okay with it. 

After two hours of building adrenalin backstage, I was pretty much on autopilot for the performance. 
We weren't even aware of all the people seated behind us.

At our level of performance, it's hard to imagine having an audience of this size back in Canada.  For a guy who likes attention, China is the place to be.

Further Precautions Against H1N1

This was the scene at the entrance to Teaching Building 1 this morning.

        
I caught the tail end of the rush to classes, so I missed the mob scene.

September 09, 2009 The Woman in China Goes Online

For her birthday I bought Ruth a domain name of her choice, which turned out to be www.thewomaninchina.com . Since then she's been having a great time developing her own web presence, and has now given me permission to make this announcement.
                              
    Since she's starting from scratch, with the benefit of having seen my site evolve over the past few years, her site is much more focused on the needs of her students.  I rather envy her the fresh start.  Check it out.

September 09, 2009 Military Activity on Campus

Six in the morning and we wake up to blaring loud speakers and martial music.  It happens every term, as the new crop of freshmen are introduced to the Chinese military.  I rather like the music.

Freshmen all got two weeks of what seems to be mostly marching practice.  I got two weeks with a very light course load.

This university accepts students from all over China, including Tibet.  I'm pretty sure these two weeks of training are essential, if only to achieve a uniform level of personal hygiene and bed making skills.

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Precautions against H1N1

As I write this, there are several students in the campus hospital with confirmed cases of H1N1.  The day before yesterday, Michael, our administration connection, came to our apartment to give us face masks and thermometers.  We're not required to wear the masks, and right now we don't.  So far we haven't felt any need for the thermometers, but I do appreciate the way this university takes care of us.

For a while there was a nurse stationed at the entrance to Teaching Building one, efficiently taking student temperatures as they came for classes.  We're not worried.  This variety of flu doesn't sound much worse than the average seasonal infection.  And older people are reported to be more resistant.  So, aside from not dipping my chopsticks into the communal food dish for a while, l live life as usual.

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Chinglish Again, with an Explanation

I love seeing signs like this one, which I found at the top of the stairs at a Japanese restaurant downtown.  Unfortunately, the staff saw me take the picture, and asked why I was interested.  So this sign will probably be replaced.

The first two Chinese characters read 小心 xiǎo xīn (literally "small heart" but meaning be careful) so I can see where the "beware" came from.  The second two, 碰头 pèng tóu, were a mystery until I consulted my dictionary and found that together they have three meanings - ①see each other ②meet and discuss; put heads together  ③hit one's head accidentally.  Obviously the sign's translator just chose the second definition when he should have read on to the third.
     Thinking about what we would put on the sign, it too sounds like Chinglish.  How on earth can one "watch your head".
     When I see a sign like this one, I know that it isn't alone.  It's one of thousands in a production run.  So even if this one disappears, there are others in restaurants all over China.  Someday they will be priceless collector's items,  a reminder of a less sophisticated but much more charming time.

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The Big News - bowing to pressure from readers you can now make a comment about anything on this site, initiate or join in discussions, by going to my brand new, bright and shiny Man in China Forum.  Try it out.  I'd love to hear from you.  Especially if you have questions about English or life in China.

September 03, 2009 the New Mobile Phone

When I first came to China, five years ago, one of the first things I did was buy a cheap mobile phone.  It's been an essential lifeline in many situation, but finally the numbers have worn off the buttons and it's refusing to charge.  I think I paid about 900RMB ($146 Canadian today but much less back then.  The RMB has gained on the dollar.) for it back in 2004.  It owes me nothing.

 

Buying a phone here is not something I want to do without some help.  Prices range from a few hundred yuan to a few thousand.  My favourite driver, Mr. Chen, and my young graduate student friend, Jenny, took me to the ultimate phone store.  I bought a Nokia Nseries touch phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera and a Carl Zeiss lens.  Apparently it will do all kinds of things I've never asked a phone to do, like connect to the internet, record videos, and store simply gigabytes of information.  All I'm going to use it for is text messaging and phone calls.  I'm getting used to the touch screen.  The price for this miracle of technology - 850 RMB ($138 Canadian), about 50 yuan less than I paid for my basic phone back in Tai'an.

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September 1, 2009 Epiphany of the Morning

The creationists are right about one thing.  We did not descend from apes.  We ARE apes, only with big brains and special abilities. Let's see ourselves as we are. Special, but a part of the natural world.

September 1, 2009 A Letter from Catherine in Canada

I'm finding that one of the joys of this job is hearing from former students who are now out in the big wide world, experiencing life.  Here's a picture and letter that Catherine sent to Ruth.

Hi Ruth, I'm in Toronto now, living with my uncle. He has been in Canada for 7 years, and he help me a lot adapt to life here. I saw a lot of wild animals here these days, like squirrels, sea- gulls, ducks, which is a rare phenomenon in people's residence areas in China. The Chinese food here is a little bit wired, not like what I eat everyday in China. My uncle said it's because most of the cook came from Guangdong Province or Hongkong, who have very different tastes and cooking styles. But yesterday I ate my first tasty meal, also cooked by Guangdong cooks. So I guess maybe they can cook something to my taste. And last night, I had my best sleep in Canada. I think I'm getting used to life here gradually. Catherine

Speaking of letters from Students:

Here's one from one of my students,  Tom.  I always try to answer any questions that students send me at length. Please pardon my rather pedantic response.

September Already and We're Back in the Swim of Things

The weather has turned pleasantly cooler and heavy rain has cleared the humidity since we arrived.  We're back to our half hour on the exercise machine every morning, and we had our first Chinese class with Falcon yesterday afternoon, right after Ruth's first Oral English class. 
     This morning I'm off with our friend Jenny to Meng Zhidao, the big computer store downtown, to buy a new mobile phone.  The one I bought in Tai'an five years ago (yikes!) has finally given up the ghost and refuses to charge.  It doesn't owe me anything. 
     This afternoon I have my first class,  News Reading for third year English majors,  and this evening we have a performance of "Tong Nian" ("Childhood"), one of our favourite Chinese songs, for visiting officials.  Time to get at it.

Time to archive again:  So soon.  So much has happened in the past few months.  The really good stuff is in the archives,  folks.  I hate to bury it back there,  because I fear that nobody will ever click on the links.  But you should.  Really.  I promise.       

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