April 2002
I met her in the Banana Bar club in Nan Gang the Saturday before my birthday, and we had a brief, bright, but quickly extinguished…what? Affair? No, no sex. Relationship? No, no commitment was made. I don't know what to call it, but from being the perfect thirtieth birthday present, a promise of fireworks, we became a damp squib, and I don't know why.
It's gone two and I'm dancing with Tam, Clive and Ken on the sprung, bouncy, neon-lit dance floor amidst thick dry ice. Clive is doing the bump-and-grind with a tall, big-boned girl who's all elbows, Tam is gesticulating in that middle-weight boxer style, while Ken is wrapping himself lizard-like around the pole on the stage, forcing his body into all sorts of painful contortions as a group of hormonally-charged teenage girls make eyes at him and scream. Liu Yang starts dancing beside me, then with me, then against me, in tight black jeans, black v-neck top, long hair up in a pony-tail, and these funky black glasses that make her look like a cross between a downhill skier and a pop star.
The music stops and the lights come on. It's time for the exotic dancers or, to call a spade a spade, the strippers. The floor's cleared and, as the men start whooping, and the women start cursing their whooping men, Liu Yang and I escape to the bar for a drink. Under the brighter lights of the bar I realise she's not just cute, but actually quite beautiful: clear pale skin, sparkling eyes, lovely smile, and with kind, tactile mannerisms. We make the usual small talk. She's from Da Qing, studies English at Harbin Normal University, has one year of her studies left. She's still not sure what she wants to do after she graduates. The music starts up again, and we spend the rest of the night dancing together. When it's time for her to go, she takes me by the hand and leads me to the cloakroom, where she finds a pen in her bag and we exchange numbers. We arrange to go shopping during the week, and I invite her to my birthday celebrations the next weekend, she leaves with her friends, and I spend the rest of the night on a cloud floating somewhere above the dry ice.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Wuchang again, and again
Clive and I have been back to Wuchang to earn our extra pocket money two or three times now; but it, too, has changed, and is losing its previous allure. A lot of this has to do with the lack of social time with Rina, and the disappearance of Cindy.
Rina is now studying English full time at the HIT University in Harbin, then coming back home to Wuchang to teach two full weekend days at her little school. It must be exhausting. She lacks confidence in her English, although I think her speaking, especially, is quite good. Tiredness and this only half-hidden insecurity have turned her into a zombie-like apparition, who stumbles and mumbles about, muttering to herself and complaining. Poor Rina, formerly the queen of gregariousness, a bolt of lightning, a shot of adrenalin, has aged before my eyes. You just want to give her a hug, tell her everything will be all right, then give her a kick up the arse and tell her to snap out of it.
Even more sadly, at least for Clive, who is broken-hearted, is Cindy’s elopement. It turns out that not only did Cindy have Clive, plus his Chinese rival in Harbin (a businessman her family wanted her to marry but whom she refused), but she also had a third man, her first love who lives in Beijing, and it was to him she ran when things got too much for her. She moved in with her old flame, found a job in sales, hated it, quit, and is now, according to Rina, as unhappy as ever, as she's feeling guilty and missing her family, but is too proud to come home.
My nemesis Danny is now our main minder. He acts the part of welcoming host, but seems anxious to get rid of us as quickly as possible when the work is done. Long gone are the nights out and the dancing at Happy Sundays, a distant memory the staggering back at five in the morning to awaken the sleepy night porter at the Overlook Hotel. And yet, after class, Danny still says, 'See you in two weeks,' and we find ourselves pressured into agreeing to just one more weekend. We have to sign our names on pay slips now, which Danny keeps in a locked drawer, and we wonder if, in the future, we ever say 'no' to working in Wuchang, will he use this evidence, and his contacts at the college, to make our lives difficult there? A dangerous game, but one we went into quite willingly, so can't really complain about.
That Sunday morning Clive opened the curtains and we looked out onto the low-rise mess of the little town to find it covered in three inches of red sand, a storm the night before having come in from the Gobi desert and enveloped the place. Cars, bikes, rooftops, pavements, balconies, streets and walls, all covered in red sand and enveloped and strange and alien, like a scene from Mars.
Rina is now studying English full time at the HIT University in Harbin, then coming back home to Wuchang to teach two full weekend days at her little school. It must be exhausting. She lacks confidence in her English, although I think her speaking, especially, is quite good. Tiredness and this only half-hidden insecurity have turned her into a zombie-like apparition, who stumbles and mumbles about, muttering to herself and complaining. Poor Rina, formerly the queen of gregariousness, a bolt of lightning, a shot of adrenalin, has aged before my eyes. You just want to give her a hug, tell her everything will be all right, then give her a kick up the arse and tell her to snap out of it.
Even more sadly, at least for Clive, who is broken-hearted, is Cindy’s elopement. It turns out that not only did Cindy have Clive, plus his Chinese rival in Harbin (a businessman her family wanted her to marry but whom she refused), but she also had a third man, her first love who lives in Beijing, and it was to him she ran when things got too much for her. She moved in with her old flame, found a job in sales, hated it, quit, and is now, according to Rina, as unhappy as ever, as she's feeling guilty and missing her family, but is too proud to come home.
My nemesis Danny is now our main minder. He acts the part of welcoming host, but seems anxious to get rid of us as quickly as possible when the work is done. Long gone are the nights out and the dancing at Happy Sundays, a distant memory the staggering back at five in the morning to awaken the sleepy night porter at the Overlook Hotel. And yet, after class, Danny still says, 'See you in two weeks,' and we find ourselves pressured into agreeing to just one more weekend. We have to sign our names on pay slips now, which Danny keeps in a locked drawer, and we wonder if, in the future, we ever say 'no' to working in Wuchang, will he use this evidence, and his contacts at the college, to make our lives difficult there? A dangerous game, but one we went into quite willingly, so can't really complain about.
That Sunday morning Clive opened the curtains and we looked out onto the low-rise mess of the little town to find it covered in three inches of red sand, a storm the night before having come in from the Gobi desert and enveloped the place. Cars, bikes, rooftops, pavements, balconies, streets and walls, all covered in red sand and enveloped and strange and alien, like a scene from Mars.
Song Feng Shan
The foreign teachers, including three new recruits, a pithy Brummie called Jim, and Sarah and Jane, two Liverpudlian girls of Cantonese Chinese ethnicity, and to whom taxi drivers continuously speak Mandarin, without realising they don't understand a word, piled onto the old school bus to find a store of boxes of cold chicken burgers, cartons of yoghurt and bottles of water. We had been invited (ordered?) to go on a school trip to the mountains of Song Feng Shan. This had never happened before in my time here, and I wondered if there was an ulterior motive. Perhaps Charles and Susan wanted us to see their human side. Perhaps they wanted to show the new teachers how jolly and fun working at the college can be. Perhaps they just wanted us hard-working teachers to relax. Depends what spin you put on it.
After an hour and a half's bus ride, we found ourselves in tiny country villages with tin-roofed concrete huts and dirty children, the huge bare mountains looming darkly in the distance under the clearest of blue skies. The driver kept getting us lost down dirt tracks while Tam, Anita and I bounced up and down painfully on the back seat. It got more painful on arrival, however: Charles, that nervous, ingratiating man put on an air of patronising patrician benevolence, expostulating over the area's history like a lord of the manor; Susan, his stick-thin wife, held his arm and simpered; Gina, frighteningly, morphed into a sixteen-stone cheerleader. Our bosses had a forced air of jollity that, quite frankly, made me queasy.
We walked to the four viewpoints on the mountain peaks, metal railings to stop us falling off the huge boulders stacked up like crumbling dry-stone dykes built long ago by giants. Tiny settlements lay like specks of gathered dust way below, dwarfed by the sheer blue canopy of sky above. The mountains sang a breezy siren's song. I left the group along with Ken and Jim to do some exploring. We spent the rest of the day discovering the alternative peaks, where there were no paths, no railings, just incredibly steep ascents you dragged yourself up, using tree roots and tufts of dried grass. A fresh, airy feeling of freedom and optimism blew around us all afternoon. At the top of our climbs, we sat on massive, smooth rock deposits, bigger than houses, and set the school, the country, the world to rights. White butterflies played intricate aerial patterns above our heads, blue woodpeckers scuttled up trunks and tapped and tapped, kestrels hovered above us in the cloudless sky; the school, China, the world, may be changing, but on Song Feng Shan time stood still.
After an hour and a half's bus ride, we found ourselves in tiny country villages with tin-roofed concrete huts and dirty children, the huge bare mountains looming darkly in the distance under the clearest of blue skies. The driver kept getting us lost down dirt tracks while Tam, Anita and I bounced up and down painfully on the back seat. It got more painful on arrival, however: Charles, that nervous, ingratiating man put on an air of patronising patrician benevolence, expostulating over the area's history like a lord of the manor; Susan, his stick-thin wife, held his arm and simpered; Gina, frighteningly, morphed into a sixteen-stone cheerleader. Our bosses had a forced air of jollity that, quite frankly, made me queasy.
We walked to the four viewpoints on the mountain peaks, metal railings to stop us falling off the huge boulders stacked up like crumbling dry-stone dykes built long ago by giants. Tiny settlements lay like specks of gathered dust way below, dwarfed by the sheer blue canopy of sky above. The mountains sang a breezy siren's song. I left the group along with Ken and Jim to do some exploring. We spent the rest of the day discovering the alternative peaks, where there were no paths, no railings, just incredibly steep ascents you dragged yourself up, using tree roots and tufts of dried grass. A fresh, airy feeling of freedom and optimism blew around us all afternoon. At the top of our climbs, we sat on massive, smooth rock deposits, bigger than houses, and set the school, the country, the world to rights. White butterflies played intricate aerial patterns above our heads, blue woodpeckers scuttled up trunks and tapped and tapped, kestrels hovered above us in the cloudless sky; the school, China, the world, may be changing, but on Song Feng Shan time stood still.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Back to Harbin
March 2002
Charles sits at the head of the long wooden table, grinning nervously, Gina sitting to his left, his wife Susan to his right, like the ugly faithful monsters - half dog, half dragon - that sit either side of temple gates to ward off evil spirits. They have their work cut out; there are plenty malevolent spirits in this room, myself included. Charles, tongue-tied as ever, coughs and tries to summon up the courage to tackle a difficult subject directly.
'Just because Karen has, well, left,' he begins, 'does not mean you should be feeling, umm, insecure.'
Karen, our Director of Studies, had done a runner and was never coming back. Weirdly, we should have known. She'd mysteriously turned up the day before Chinese New Year's eve in a Beijing park we were visiting, saying a peremptory hello, before slinking off with Danuka, who had become a close friend, for a pow-wow. At the time, I was too busy both flirting with Marina and psyching myself up to eat a stick of barbequed scorpions, to think much about it. Later, Danuka, obviously sworn to secrecy, refused to tell us what was going on, and her fearsome temper procluded further investigations.
Whatever, obviously the pressure of trying to keep us demanding teachers happy whilst dealing with the cloak-and-dagger politics of the college had got to Karen in the end. Often in team meetings she would raise her hands in exasperation and say, 'Look, don't blame me, I know it's a stupid idea but...' And we never did blame her.
'From now on,' Charles continues, 'your new Director of Studies will be Susan, my wife. If you have any academic questions, go to her. She will also be in charge of your schedules and of maintaining academic quality. Give her your full co-operation.'
The definition of 'nepotism' is:-
'Using your power or influence to obtain good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family'.
Susan then made a speech about how hard she was going to work and how hard she wanted us to work in return. She was looking forward to a harmonious future relationship with her foreign teachers. All said through lips as thin as a hair's breadth, and with a hard look in her cold eyes.
'On the logistics side, if you need anything, you can ask Gina. She will now be my assistant, and Head of the Foreign Department.'
The definition of 'cronyism' is:-
'A partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy. Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary are in social contact; often, the appointer is inadequate to hold his or her own job or position of authority, and for this reason the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken him or her, or express views contrary to those of the appointer.'
Gina beamed victoriously, like a queen rightfully restored to her throne.
A most unholy triumvirate, made worse by the lack, the emptiness, of the 5th Floor lounge and teacher's office. Not only Karen has gone, but J, Albert and Paul too. The teachers are now being so slave-driven by Susan we have no time to relax in the lounge. Susan has moved out all the Chinese teachers whose first subject is not English from the office, and sometimes it's just Ronald, Ken, Patrick and I rattling about that big room with a few older Chinese who, strangely, can't speak any English. Every day a few of the old women put a foot up on the radiator to stretch their hamstrings out, or skip wildly in the middle of the floor, making the whole office vibrate.
As all this political wrangling goes on behind the scenes, I just concentrate on my teaching. Amazingly, I begin to find myself quite good at it. I see marked progress in my students' English - and attidude - despite the fact that they're now being bombarded with test after test, and forced to study an Upper Intermediate book which is way too hard for them. I've told my new DoS about this but, as Susan was the one who chose the textbook, there's no chance it'll be changed.
I'm giving up two of my evenings every week to help the students who need it catch up on their work. This college may be no meritocracy, but I'm damn sure my classroom will be.
Charles sits at the head of the long wooden table, grinning nervously, Gina sitting to his left, his wife Susan to his right, like the ugly faithful monsters - half dog, half dragon - that sit either side of temple gates to ward off evil spirits. They have their work cut out; there are plenty malevolent spirits in this room, myself included. Charles, tongue-tied as ever, coughs and tries to summon up the courage to tackle a difficult subject directly.
'Just because Karen has, well, left,' he begins, 'does not mean you should be feeling, umm, insecure.'
Karen, our Director of Studies, had done a runner and was never coming back. Weirdly, we should have known. She'd mysteriously turned up the day before Chinese New Year's eve in a Beijing park we were visiting, saying a peremptory hello, before slinking off with Danuka, who had become a close friend, for a pow-wow. At the time, I was too busy both flirting with Marina and psyching myself up to eat a stick of barbequed scorpions, to think much about it. Later, Danuka, obviously sworn to secrecy, refused to tell us what was going on, and her fearsome temper procluded further investigations.
Whatever, obviously the pressure of trying to keep us demanding teachers happy whilst dealing with the cloak-and-dagger politics of the college had got to Karen in the end. Often in team meetings she would raise her hands in exasperation and say, 'Look, don't blame me, I know it's a stupid idea but...' And we never did blame her.
'From now on,' Charles continues, 'your new Director of Studies will be Susan, my wife. If you have any academic questions, go to her. She will also be in charge of your schedules and of maintaining academic quality. Give her your full co-operation.'
The definition of 'nepotism' is:-
'Using your power or influence to obtain good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family'.
Susan then made a speech about how hard she was going to work and how hard she wanted us to work in return. She was looking forward to a harmonious future relationship with her foreign teachers. All said through lips as thin as a hair's breadth, and with a hard look in her cold eyes.
'On the logistics side, if you need anything, you can ask Gina. She will now be my assistant, and Head of the Foreign Department.'
The definition of 'cronyism' is:-
'A partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy. Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary are in social contact; often, the appointer is inadequate to hold his or her own job or position of authority, and for this reason the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken him or her, or express views contrary to those of the appointer.'
Gina beamed victoriously, like a queen rightfully restored to her throne.
A most unholy triumvirate, made worse by the lack, the emptiness, of the 5th Floor lounge and teacher's office. Not only Karen has gone, but J, Albert and Paul too. The teachers are now being so slave-driven by Susan we have no time to relax in the lounge. Susan has moved out all the Chinese teachers whose first subject is not English from the office, and sometimes it's just Ronald, Ken, Patrick and I rattling about that big room with a few older Chinese who, strangely, can't speak any English. Every day a few of the old women put a foot up on the radiator to stretch their hamstrings out, or skip wildly in the middle of the floor, making the whole office vibrate.
As all this political wrangling goes on behind the scenes, I just concentrate on my teaching. Amazingly, I begin to find myself quite good at it. I see marked progress in my students' English - and attidude - despite the fact that they're now being bombarded with test after test, and forced to study an Upper Intermediate book which is way too hard for them. I've told my new DoS about this but, as Susan was the one who chose the textbook, there's no chance it'll be changed.
I'm giving up two of my evenings every week to help the students who need it catch up on their work. This college may be no meritocracy, but I'm damn sure my classroom will be.
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