In each of my classes about China at Grinnell, the central theme was that China has been and is continuing to experience amazing levels of social, cultural and economic change. Coming back to Nanjing after having spent a summer here two years ago, I find it really interesting to see firsthand how thi ngs have changed in this relatively short period of time. There’s nothing that’s shockingly different, but change is definitely noticeable – the gigantic red skeleton that used to be across from my office is now a shiny new skyscraper that is the tallest building in Jiangsu province, people’s cell phones have become really fancy, most of the street vendors have disappeared (ok, that was shocking) and the price of DVD’s has gone up 150%. This feeling of change is also compounded by the fact that more than once we’ve walked past a storefront one day, and a week later it’s a completely new establishment.
Noticing these little changes makes me think about how much things have changed since the program started over twenty years ago. Our school boasted to us the other day that NDFZ was the first high school in Nanjing to have foreign English teachers, but today enough laowai (foreigners) live in the city to support numerous coffee shops, pizza places, and expat bars. It’s really interesting to be a part of all this change, and I often think about what things will be like here in another twenty years.
Of course a lot of things remain the same – the food is still amazing, most of the people I meet are happy to talk with me and the drivers are still totally reckless. Let’s hope only the last one changes in the years to come.
School Life
Nanjing University Attached High School (NDFZ) has been a pleasure to work for so far. We’ve been treated to several banquets, a guided tour of some of Nanjing’s tourist sites, and Katie and I have been surprisingly satisfied with our meals at the cafeteria, I think mostly because they’re refreshingly simple and homey after months of eating out for every meal.
After a couple weeks and several schedule changes, we finally settled into a normal routine of a three-day, ten-hour workweek teaching three classes each of grades seven, eight and ten, and one conversation class with the school’s English teachers. We also have an English corner and office hours during lunch every week, where we generally play games and are asked endless “what is your favorite ______?” questions such as, “what is your favorite animal?”, “what is your favorite movie” and “what is your favorite letter in the English language?”
Before starting the fellowship I thought that teaching was going to be by far the hardest part of my year in Nanjing. I’ve never really taught before, and I really had no idea what to expect in the classroom. I wasn’t always sure I would have the confidence to run a classroom and dreaded the thought of being stuck speechless in front of a class of thirty teenagers. What I’ve discovered though, is that class itself is usually a breeze. Forty-five minutes flies by when I try to get each student to speak once, plus I really enjoy watching the kids come up with creative dialogues and presentations. Of course there are a few classes with some discipline problems, but a couple of penalty quizzes seems to have settled them down for the time being.
What I find to be much harder than actually teaching is preparing to teach. When we first arrived, I worried about my first lesson plan for days. I read endless examples online, skimmed through books left in the room and bounced ideas off other people, all of which were basically ways to delay the task at hand, actually writing down a lesson plan. I finally came up with the ingenious idea of introducing myself, and then having the students introduce themselves to me. The fact that I have 3 siblings and 50 cousins really wowed them, and aside from the fact that I had to put a ban on saying “I know NBA” as an answer to the question “what is one thing you know about the USA?”, the lesson went great. But I still find myself struggling every week to think of creative ways to get across all the different things I’m really excited to teach my kids about. I also can’t consider it a coincidence that the one day I went in feeling a bit under-prepared several of my classes were the most out of control they’ve ever been. I’m still not sure if they could smell my weakness or if the lesson was just plain boring, but I only came away from that day having learned that my level of preparedness has a huge impact on how well class goes.
While there have been some rough days, I’ve already had a lot of great memories from teaching. Our Halloween party was extremely popular for the five minutes that the candy lasted, and a lot of students stuck around to make toilet paper ghosts and play pin the eye on Frankenstein even after the candy was gone. It’s also always really exciting when I hear the kids singing a song or using a vocabulary word I taught them weeks ago. It’s also been neat to watch some of the kids who originally wouldn’t say a single word in English start to open up. A student I distinctly remember turning to his classmates and saying in Chinese “I don’t get it, what’s he saying?” every single time I spoke to him has started becoming an active participant in every class and ended up telling one of the best ghost stories on Halloween.
Grinnell-in-Nanjing
One way in which I imagine my experiences differ a lot from the experiences of past fellows is that this year there are five members of the class of ’09 in Nanjing. My girlfriend Paige Greenley is teaching English at Nanjing University and the Nanjing Foreign Language School Kindergarten, Neil Finnegan is teaching high school English at the Nanjing Foreign Language School and Chris Wong is studying at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Not only was it nice to have some people I knew as I settled into Nanjing, but it’s made it a lot easier to meet people from a wider range of backgrounds, including Chinese university students, other high school English teachers and post-graduate students. A couple of highlights were being invited to a Chinese university student’s birthday party, karaoke and all, going to the Hopkins-Nanjing Halloween party and playing at an open mike night with some other English teachers.
Of course, the fact that it is so easy to spend all my time with people from a similar background makes it very easy to stick with what is familiar rather than trying to find some new experiences. The sad fact is that I really don’t find use for my Chinese as much as I would like to, although I have been trying to keep up studying on my own by using a textbook, listening to podcasts and attempting to read Harry Potter in Chinese. This is obviously no one’s fault but my own, there’s more than ample opportunity to practice here, but hopefully in writing this down for everyone to see I can make it more of a priority.
That’s not to say I don’t get to use my Chinese at all. Although my services have been needed less and less, I’ve been acting as translator for Katie and Paige in a lot of situations. One of the most interesting experiences I’ve had here was helping Paige while she rented an apartment. Having fallen victim to a scam in China in the past, I was really worried when the landlord wanted her to pay the rent for the entire ten months, up front, in cash. Having no idea how this kind of thing works, I kept telling her that Paige would rather just pay one month at a time. Soon I was in a heated battle with the real estate agent, who didn’t seem to be on my side, asking me over and over again, “Can she pay for three months? Four! Five! Six! Seven!”. After about 10 minutes of this we agreed on paying for three months up front and the rest after three months was over. I found out soon after that it is pretty uncommon to be allowed to pay for only three months. This also probably explains why I once saw a woman take out 100,000 yuan in cash from the bank.
Aside from Chinese language, I’m also trying to work on engaging in more Chinese cultural experiences. I bought a mahjong set on Taobao, the Chinese Amazon, and Chris has promised to teach me how to play. My dream would be to be able to go play with the groups of retirees who play out on the street, though I’m not sure how likely that is to happen. I was also really excited when a DVD salesman saw I was buying a Chinese film, said in English, “Chinese films. Good!” and ran back to grab five of his favorite Chinese movies for me.
I’ve picked up a few side jobs teaching a seven and nine year old, a sixteen year old and a thirty year old, which has actually been a pretty good way to glimpse into the lives of different age groups here. My youngest students and I don’t do much chatting, we mostly talk about colors and the difference between big and small, but it’s been really interesting to talk to a high school student in a setting that isn’t strictly teacher-student. We talk about Quentin Tarantino movies, the Canadian government, and he’s even given me some suggestions about how to make my classes more interesting. Working with a thirty year old businessman who is hoping to get and MBA in America has also been enjoyable. He’s actually been teaching me a lot of stuff about finance, a world I know almost nothing about, and we’ve had some really interesting discussions about the differences between Chinese and American thinking. He really couldn’t understand why as a premed student I would want to study Chinese and then waste a year living abroad, when I could be using my time to hone my medical skills. A talk about liberal arts later, I think he was a bit more on board with my decision.
National Day Holiday
After our first month were notified we would get a whole week off to celebrate National Day, the day commemorating the anniversary of the PRC. This year was the 60th anniversary so it was kind of a big deal, it even had it’s own logo that is still around everywhere we go. Going to see fireworks was quite exciting and it seemed like every spot in the city that had any view whatsoever was packed, but we ended up with a decent view right in the middle of the crowds.
During our time off Katie, Paige and I took a trip to Hangzhou, a nice city about four hours away from Nanjing. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake, a mid-sized lake that we spent most of our three days just walking around. A memorable, but not-so-spectacular part of the trip was waiting for an entire afternoon to see the Qiantang River tidal bore, a natural phenomenon that we didn’t completely understand as we stood waiting for it for 3 hours, but turned out to be a single wave rolling up a river. Overall it was a really relaxing break from bustling Nanjing.
Thanks!
Thanks to Doug Cutchins for making it so easy to get over here, to Katie for sharing lesson plans with me and to our three go-to people on this end, Fang laoshi, Zhou laoshi and Todd for all their help.
