Shame

In a country where “keeping face,” aka, maintaining your status, and not looking bad in front of your peers is crucial, I guess it makes sense that ’shaming’ a student would work as a behavior control technique. However, the process of shaming a student that you cannot really rough up (as tempting as it is sometimes), much less communicate with effectively using words, becomes much more complicated. The Chinese teachers have the edge here. There is no hesitation in berating a first grader for a few minutes in the middle of class to stop the unwanted behavior. Top offenses include:

1) Incessant touching of desk mate. Some kids just cannot keep their hands off of each other. Sure, it’s cute, it’s puppy love, but it’s clear they are not paying attention to my melodic rendition of 3 Little Monkeys, and its pissing me off.

2) Stealing the “Hello Kitty” pencil pouch of the girl behind you, or the “Toy Story 2″ rocket ship pencil box of the boy in front. It never gets old, trust me.

3) When repeating as a class, there is always the one kid who has to say it first, throwing off the whole synch of things. I realize that when the most stressful part of your day is having to glare really menacingly at the kid who says ‘B’ right when you say it, instead of immediately after like everyone else, really your job/life isn’t all that tough. But I can’t even begin to explain how I want to rip their vocal cords out.

Today, I figured it out though. The kids here go absolutely insane for a sticker (preferably a red, for communism, star) as a reward. I’m pretty sure I could get them fluent in French too, if I had enough stickers. So when I first started giving them out I was a little bit confused, because instead of holding out their hands for them, they look straight up at you like a lost puppy might. I learned eventually that this was the cue to put them right on the middle of their forehead. The more stickers they get in a day, the cooler they are. Status clearly isn’t lost on them.

So today after my little star student got his sticker, I suppose he realized that odds were he wouldn’t get another one, and he could just goof off the rest of the day. I went over to his desk, tapped him on the shoulder, and made sure everyone saw me rip the sticker right off his head.

Making children cry isn’t always my goal. I just consider it a perk of the job.

More Thoughts on State-Controlled Media

Another feeling that I always get when reading the English newpaper, The China Daily, is that the government is trying to teach you a little life lesson with some stories. Regardless of whether or not it has any shred of truth in it. Take this article for example; “Boozing Bear Like Beer, but Drinks Responsibly”

A black bear in a wildlife zoo in Weihai, East China’s Shandong Province, has quite a taste for alcohol. But what amazes zookeepers most is that it knows when to stop drinking before it becomes drunk. The 10-year-old bear likes drinking beer – it can down a bottle of beer in just a few seconds. After finishing one bottle, the bear will fold its paws into a bow, indicating to zookeepers that it wants more. But as soon as it finishes a six-pack, the bear will stop drinking no matter how hard the keeper pushes it to having more. (Weihai Evening News)

Riiiight. So how did we come across this little experiment exactly?

Communism is so not Cool Sometimes

Usually the fact that China is communist really doesn’t affect my day to day life. Even a lot of Chinese people seem to agree that it is just more efficient to have the government decide things for the 1.3 billion, than to try to have political factions battling things out, accomplishing nothing. In light of the current situation in Congress, it doesn’t really seem so crazy sometimes.
However, the communist party leadership seems to be very worried about the younger generation using the internet to start any kind of uprising or revolution. Hence where it starts to affect my life. Many social networking, aka blogs and picture sharing sites, are generally blocked, as are sites such as Wikipedia, which contain information that the government doesn’t want getting out (such as what actually happened in Tianenmen square in ‘89). On a side note, according to my host parents, the students violently attacked the soldiers, resulting in the deaths of 9 soldiers. This is of course contrary to well, history. And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen video of it to the contrary. I found out later that my host dad was the leader of a “young communist political group” in his local province, which I guess why he still totes the official party line, even today. Still, I think that many people today in China really do believe that the government did nothing wrong, and the party will take whatever shred of credibility it can take whenever it can get it.
So I woke up today to find that Youtube, in all its glory, has now been officially blocked. That was pretty much the last link to American Pop Culture, the good and the bad, I had left. They may as well ban the internet outright, and just get it over with.

Anyways, having a state controlled media as well makes for some fun propaganda. And I hope its propagand, because if it’s true, it would just be sad. Take this article for example:

北京提升猪肉产品质量 生猪入圈静养听音乐
To improve pork quality, Beijing pigs will listen to soothing music

Said a spokesperson of one of the 10 Olympic pig farms (whose locations are a top secret):
“生猪入圈后进行24小时静养，听着舒缓的音乐淋浴、饮水，目的是减少应激反应，避免猪肉中出现不良物质。”
The pigs are kept under 24-hour care. They wlll listen to soothing music while being bathed or drinking their water. This is to reduce their stress reactions and to avoid bad substances from appearing in the pork.

I think this is a winning idea really. Global Warming? No potable drinking water in 10 years? No biggie. Our pigs are going to be damn tasty.

Randomness

-I bought PB & J the other day to be able to have a taste of home when I needed a snack. Much to my dismay, however, I came home from work to find my little sister mixing the jam with water, making some sort of ghetto juice.

-I ate turtle the other night, which is considered a delicacy here. It wasn’t bad actually, just kinda gummy and flavorless. I was then forced to eat the turtle penis, because in China it is said that it gives men virility. Only, it got even weirder because this turtle had two for some reason. I drew the line at one, however.

- I figured out that I make about 25 times what our housekeeper does, which I think highlights (even with my fairly modest salary) the huge gulf between the rich and the poor here.

-It costs about $5,000 in Shanghai just to register your car.

-I was at a market yesterday with my friend Jamie Barys, because she needed to take back her $2 sunglasses to get fixed. Of course the “Ray-Bans” broke within 3 days. Besides selling sunglasses, the store sold teapots (why wouldn’t it?), which was unfortunate for me, because I knocked one over and had to pay $6 for it.

-I broke a sweat playing ping-pong with my host father the other day, which I didn’t think was even possible.

-There is a restaurant by my house called “The Aristocratic Family of Soup.” Also one called “Fishiness Infinitude” which I have yet to try.

Life is good.

Beauty in China

Shanghai

Originally uploaded by Long Hai

Amid recent news that Shanghai comes in as the 2nd least “green” and “livable” city in the world (right above Beijing), I try to stop when I see really beautiful things.

Which means, sadly, that I never run outside, nor does anyone really for that matter. Actually, the only time I’ve seen people outside running is about 3-4 AM when I’m coming home from the “juice bar” and there aren’t many cars out. Let’s just say I don’t have that kind of motivation.

Exercising the Eyes

Twice a day, students are required to do these little face/eye exercises. I’m not sure if they are accomplishing anything, but it’s by far my favorite part of the day.