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| COMMENTS & STORIES |
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Kamloops , B.C. March 31, 2007
Dear Friends and Family,
Who knew that China lay in the path of my life’s unfolding adventure? Not me! You know that I am inclined to live life with passion and purpose though, and in that regard this latest venture is just par for the course. My own personal assessment is that when I sold my house in Brocklehurst (a suburban area of Kamloops) last May, and moved into a 55-and-up condo complex right downtown, I was at a critical junction.
In sum, I took the road less-travelled. I could have stayed in Kamloops and made my way to retirement from teaching, where I would have my relatively-new interest in painting to explore and develop. This appeared to be satisfactory, and probably even a pretty good measure of a su ccessful career and life, but I did feel that I was not quite ready for that . . . even if I managed to teach until 65.
I should also record that I did not go casting about for something more exciting to do; rather, it ‘came across my desk’ when one of my colleagues — returning from a visit to an overseas teacher friend in Dalian, China — came to me and said : « You! You should go there. You’re perfect for it.
After this, I began to inform myself about the school there (Maple Leaf International) and, putting one foot after the other over the space of many months, eventually I found myself signing a contract for a 2-year teaching position in Dalian. I will be teaching Senior English in their senior secondary school, where 150 B.C. Certified teachers deliver courses to (85% Chinese) students wanting to graduate from an a credited B.C. highschool so they can apply directly to Canadian universities for their post-secondary education. They will have to write the B.C. provincial exams in June.
Seeing an ad for a Cultural and Educational Tour of Beijing, China in the B.C. Teachers’ Federation newsletter, I signed up for it. Thought it would be good to experience Beijingprior to making my decision on teaching in China, but my interview was su ccessful and the contract appeared in my email box before Spring Break. I had to decide whether to sign it or not without first seeing China, and after a couple of days, I chose to take the risk.
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Just one week ago, I returned from this tour group trip to Beijing which was from March 16 to 25. I went with Tian Jiao International Education ( Canada) Limited. These tours are apparently subsidized by the Chinese and Canadian governments under the rubric of Sino-Canadian relations, in which Norman Bethune, Canadian volunteer surgeon in the battlefield of the WWII era battle with Japan figures imminently. The Chinese think every Canadian knows who Bethune was; alas, the truth is : far from it!
There were approximately 50 participants in the Tour, not all of whom were teachers, and it was the first time in China for all of us. There were also 3 young girls, 10,11, and 12. Plus a group of eight Coquitlam students studying Mandarin at school. Their teacher was my room-mate at the hotel. All in all, really good people. We got along well. We looked out for each other and socialized interdependently.
Some of us spent the whole time in Beijing, and the other ‘half’ went for a quick side-jaunt to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Army and to the modern city of Shanghai. On the 25th, they flew back to Beijing where they re-joined the rest of us to fly back to Vancouver on the same Air China flight.
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Lasting Impressions
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| Without a doubt, the fact of the constant smog in Beijingis the most important reality to convey. Beijing is very dry; yet, one feels that one is in a permanent state of being fogged in. It is quite simply the particulate matter in the air. Some years ago, the air-polluting industries were moved out of the city — to a rough triangle to the north — but atmospheric conditions are such that the city is still grey day after day, with the sun being dimly visible once in awhile. See the haziness right. |
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We had only two days with direct sunlight; on one of these the mountains were visible from the area around the Hotel. All the rest of the time, we could see only one block in the distance, town or countryside. People wore masks when THEY were sick — to prevent the spread of their cold or flu.
This smog does not smell (unlike in Los Angeles, where I lived for a year in 1974-75) and it does not make one feel ill (again, unlike L.A., where the smog is directly related to the use of motor vehicles), yet it clouds the environment completely. The people seem to take the whole thing in stride, or should I say, in pedal, whether on bikes or in cars. |
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Everyone looks fit and healthy. Beijingers laugh at owning at least 70 bicycles in their lifetime. Few are locked up. They a ccept that their bike will be taken by someone else, and they will have to buy another one. Now, that is. Twenty years ago, they were considered well-off if they owned a bicycle. Now, many save up to buy a car. Saw very few overweight people, and this was really just plump, not fat . . . except for one or two children.
Bicycle lanes are everywhere . No helmets. No light clothing in the dark. No reflectors. Percentage of injured cyclists taken to Emergency Rooms is not known to me at this time. Can report that ambulances ride in the clogged traffic just like everybody else. No one pulls over to let them pass. This guy probably works for the city, since he has reflective clothing. Can’t help thinking the cycling may be very important for China’s future. |
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Character homes: Old bunker-like hutangs hold their ground amid modern highrises. These are very old cement and tile-roofed dwellings which have a long history. Entire extended families live in these warren-like installations where no car can tread. We went in by rickshaw to our previously-arranged lunch-and-visit. (Rickshaws are for tourists only; bicycle-pedalled two-seaters.) Hutang people survive by putting on home-made lunch for tours like ours where everybody’s room gets the furniture pushed back and a round table put in for a couple hours each day. The cooks go to the Early Market to get their fresh vegetables and meat & fish. The woman who cooked for us talked with us after the meal. She showed us the medal her husband was awarded for being a good communist citizen (plus his photo in the paper, now affixed to the wall) and told us she ‘made ends meet’ by renting out rooms to students and serving these lunches. (I thought of Canadian homes being turned into Bed & Breakfast places and French ‘gites’ and other parallels in the world, but always one is struck by the persistence of life itself in adverse circumstances.) |
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Right : bean cakes, peanuts, tomatoes and spring rolls. Incidentally, tomatoes and potatoes are not indigenous to China. They were brought in from Europe on reverse trips on the mountain roads leading from China to Europe. Do you know that poppies were not indigenous either, but were brought via these same curving, inhospitable roads while everyone was distracted by silk, spice, and tea. Opium followed. The rest is history. Afghanistan must surely tell a similar story. |
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| I am cold, and not yet wearing the down jacket I had to buy later that day at a Chinese version of a department store. Spring was late this year, with the peonies just starting to unfurl leaf. Needless to say, the coat was a Men’s 3X and fit me perfectly. Also, I bought one of my best purchases in China at that store : a black, vibrant red-orange, grey and charcoal silk scarf/shawl which I will treasure forever as my idea of the fabulous nature of Chinese colour and design. |
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Across all experiences of life in China is ever-present the 5,000 years of recorded history. Along with this, of course, goes the consciousness of 6,000 characters to the writing system (compared with our 26 letters of the alphabet). As a teacher, I cannot avoid plunging in to the presumed consciousness of a people who, when becoming literate, spent their early years of schooling learning how to make these characters and make them again and again and make them correctly and recognize them when made by others. This alone speaks volumes about intellectual differences.
There is also the matter of the 3,000 concubines in the Emperor’s stable, and the 5-6,000 eunuchs, who ran the enterprise and controlled the women. Why did China have so many eunuchs? They didn’t. Men had themselves emasculated so that they would qualify to work in the Emporer’s forbidden city. Eventually, it is alleged, they became so adept at covering up their actions that they began to sell off the palace riches one by one. One day they are thought to have started a huge fire, which destroyed all trace of any pilfering of the wealth of the land. Who knows, even to this day?
Beautiful young girls were paraded before the Emperor each spring. First they had to pass the inspection of the senior concubines, who were known to sleep with some of them, just to see if they snored — which would have seriously disturbed the Emperor’s sleep, and which would mean they would have to be gotten rid of later, eventually, one way or the other . . . and so, like people everywhere, these more elevated concubines figured out how to make their life easier and how to stay alive for a few more years, by handpicking the Emperor’s playmates. This meant the older ones might live long enough to make it to the Concubine’s Garden of Graceful Middle Age. An eery place of moving shadowy human figures, docile, still. Willing to do what was asked. Of no earthly use, anymore.
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| There was also the Empress Dowager Cixi (pron. Shue-she). Kept herself in power by tutoring/mentoring/sucessfully shaping to her liking a series of royal infant boys. Then they were made Emperor, and she continued to direct their every thought and action from behind the draperies. She thought somehow that the people and the other power-mongers would not notice what she was doing. Now they say, when we hear of her : BAD WOMAN! She was really just the empress by virtue of having married an emperor. No woman could rule, or inherit the throne. Below, modern woman on tour of The Summer Palace unselfconsciously looking at us foreigners. |
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We toured many Chinese factories. In every place, we saw artisans at work; for example, sculpting jade, shucking oysters to mine the pearls, fitting the tiny curls of copper onto vases to lay the foundation for cloisonne vases, brooches, and assorted jewellry, removing the threads of silk from cocoons and showing us how
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indestructible it is when fitted layer upon layer to create for instance, a duvet; tea, the history of it, the ramifications for The Silk Road merchandising to Europe and the Middle East, the sampling of it, the best practice for creating the best taste, sampling rituals, and so on.
We had a ‘show’ almost every day; for example, 9-15 year old professional gymnasts performing in a downtown afternoon theatre. I was glued to the edge of my seat, at times forgetting there was anyone else there with me, so mesmerized was I by their fabulous and sometimes dangerous feats. |
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Another great show was The Legend of Kung-Fu, a 2 and ½ hour musical featuring the story of the development of this martial art by showcasing various Kung Fu displays of prowess coupled with — at times — amazing physical acrobatic dancing twenty feet above the stage in celestial clouds. I was especially captivated by the young protagonist’s coming together in blissful harmony with his newfound young lady : swirling towards each other, then dropping away like birds in flight only to resume the attraction from another brilliant perspective in the sky, until finally they went into each other’s arms in a beauteous melding of mind/body/spirit. Sorry, no photo of this. If one could capture such a thing in print, it would surely be a desrespect for the total joy of watching it live. It’ll be reflected in my spirit forever — you might catch a glimpse by simply meeting my gaze.
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| We visited The Norman Bethune medical military university in Hebei Province first,along with the museum and mausoleum, a ccompanied by scores of local dignitaries and their attendant journalists and photographers. One student was especially keen to talk to me. |
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We happily toured The Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, The Temple of Heaven, Tiananman Square, the Silk Market, the Wanfujing pedestrian shopping street, Antique Row, and more I am surely neglecting to mention. Certainly, one is impressed by the architecture’s use of the number 9 and its various extrapolations, meaning good luck, prosperity, harmonious relations, etc. Just so much to keep track of. Tour guides knowledgeable and helpful.
The history of The Great Wall is pretty fascinating and the climb these days is pretty rigorous. The steps are uneven. In fact, it is true that there are many instances of irregular steps (in Beijing, anyway), so that one was always conscious of looking down at one’s feet, in order not to trip. I made it all the way to the Second Tower. Several on the Tour made it all the way to the Fifth Tower, the highest you could go where we were.
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There were many street vendors. We had been warned off them.
Buddy here, complying with a stereotype of Chinese servant always ready to please. Cute, anyway. Made us all laugh. We stopped and bought his deep-fried goodies, despite the warning in general. |
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[I will be living about the distance from Kamloops to Vancouver away from Beijing when I am in Dalian, so I always felt I could return to any places I might have missed. Airfare is cheap within China and my salary will go far. I will have 6 weeks of winter holidays and 8 weeks of summer holidays, which I fully intend to use to travel and experience other places in Asia . . . Tibet, the Gobi desert, maybe even Australia or New Zealand.]
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| We visited an experimental school in Beijing which is a private grade 1-12 school where the parents pay to send their kids. These students live in dorms (all ages of them), have cool North-American sweatsuit uniforms and expensive running shoes, and learn in classrooms of 22-25 students. |
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I first observed a senior Geography class, where they were learning about Germany, in Mandarin, of course. Some of us visitors lined the back of the room on chairs. I can report that the noise level was subdued, the teenage hair styles astonishing in their variety, the students at the back of the room were the least productive, the three at the front of the teacher’s desk all finished their worksheet, and the others had either not started it at all, or had filled in only one section, preferring instead to visit and chat with friends in their immediate area. The teacher did not chide them or attempt to get them to work harder. I thought it looked very much like our North American classrooms and that their experiment is demonstrating that young people are perfectly capable of doing nothing if they are not engaged in structured learning for which they are held a ccountable on a moment-to-moment basis. This may sound harsh, but I think their experimental school will produce students who know almost as little as some of our highschool graduates. |
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| This one at the back was at least listening. The one on the right is playing with some sort of electronic gadget inside his desk. I gave Canadian flag pins to the three who had finished their work |
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Then I went down to a primary class, where a young pupil, upon seeing me enter, stood and began singing : « You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out, etc. », not caring if anybody else joined in, just belting it out to show that he could. So I joined him, and together we sang the whole song and did all the movements, to everyone’s great delight, while the attendant papparazzi clicked and snapped. It was great fun. After checking for permission, I gave him a Canadian coin, which made him the envy of his classmates. I wanted to see a public school, and expressed this wish, so I could compare. Alas, I was told that it would be just the same only with 65 to 100 students per class. I know how those numbers would alter the nature of the teaching-learning environment. Mass control, few individual responses or presentations, Direct Instruction methodology with, mainly, memorization for tests, and little opportunity for evaluating individuals.
Next there was a basketball game between that school’s senior boys’ basketball team and the boys of our Tour, none of whom actually play basketball back home at Heritage Woods Secondary in Coquitlam. At first, they steadfastly refused to play but when the time came, they ‘sucked it up’ and went out there. They really tried, even those who looked like they needed a basketball in their hands like a fish needs a bicycle. I led the cheering section, shouting out old Cheers I had learned when I was in highschool, and my tour-mates were thoroughly impressed with me. One even called me a Livewire! So there. And best of all, when the Primary class I had visited filed out to watch the game, they quickly caught on to what we were doing. After we would chant : Go, Canada, Go!, those little ones could be heard shouting out; Go, China, Go! In their big, puffy, down-filled outside uniforms. No photo! I was running up and down cheering.
I was also, incidentally, interviewed by the Hebei Province TV station for their evening news, to show Canadian teachers coming all that way to see the Norman Bethune monumentaria and museum. I have no idea whether it aired or which parts of what I said were kept — we were brought home late each evening to our beautiful hotel exhausted from so much wonder and awe all day long. No time to check out TV, though early one morning I did watch an international level so ccer game with a Mandarin commentator.
Same-sex friendships are readily observable and same-sex couples walk with their arms affectionately about each other’s waist or shoulders, but this is, apparently, entirely filial and any form of sexuality is, at any rate, not displayed for public view. |
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| Little one in red jacket-dress with fashionable real fur trim on pantlegs underneath. And Yes, there was a lot of spring-cleaning going on. Our last day was a free day, and I spent it with friend, Maynard Kirkpatrick, who was 20 cab minutes away from my hotel. A prof from TRU in Kamloops, he is delivering some made-to-measure courses for people working in or around Tourism, preparing for the Olympics there next year. We spent the day exploring a nearby agriculture college and enjoying my palatial Loong Palace Hotel, capturing memories of its glamour, incredible recreational facilities, including a wide assortment of massage treatments, pedicures, neck rubs (!), haute cuisine restaurants, and beautiful orchid displays. |
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Here were some girls in the Temple of Heaven : they willingly posed when I asked for a photo
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So that is all for now, my Dears. I hope you have enjoyed this. I had a great holiday and I am looking forward very much to my adventures in Dalian . . . on a map you will find it at the tip of a peninsula between Beijing and Korea. |
P.S. Apologies for any empty space or misplaced photos.
© This document and its photos are protected by Copyright. Any use without the express permission of Marlene Wildeman is prohibited.
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