Malibox 问与答

Before we get to the main topic of this post, I want to address something, hopefully without getting all Maudlin on you.

Five years ago today, an unimaginable tragedy occurred in the greatest city of my country. That event marked a turning point in the thinking of many Americans, myself included. I am reluctant to say that I became more patriotic, but rather I will say that, over time, I developed a deeper appreciation of the values that make my nation great.

They say living abroad grants an admiration for other cultures. This is true - I now believe that Japan is a truly great nation, and I have already noticed many admirable things about China. However, strangely enough, living abroad has most profoundly affected my relationship with my own country. Even as I am apart from her, my love of the United States has never been stronger than it is today.

My country is imperfect, troubled even, but it is in the striving for a more perfect union that America's true character is revealed. What I saw on that day was a community of countrymen, each striving in his or her own way to maintain that union, which has constantly been threatened but never conquered. Whatever other lessons we have yet to learn, the most valuable thing I learned on September the Eleventh was how to believe in the idea that is the United States of America. I hope that all of you, American or otherwise, will take just a moment to reflect on what you learned that day.


Okay, I said that I'd finally answer some of your burning questions, so let's get to it.

Probably the most popular:

问题："When do you start teaching already?"

This one has a story.

About two weeks ago Jessica called and told me that all of the English teachers are going to meet the Dean of Foreign Languages for our school, and that she's going to give us our class assignments. Cool. I decide that I don't want to look like a total hobo when I meet my boss for the first time, so I throw on a shirt that has actual buttons and I trade my gym shorts for slacks. Since my clothes are horribly wrinkled, I still look like half-a-hobo, but I figure it's an improvement from full-on hobotion.

So Jackie, Deb, Ronnie and I show up at the appointed place and time and Jessica introduces us to Ms. Cui (pronounced "tsoo-ay"). Ms. Cui is a middle-aged, bespectacled woman with a warm smile who speaks elegant, British-accented English. After chatting for a bit, I decide that I like her, and that I will therefore will set my charm to "stupefy".

False modesty aside, middle-aged women are my bread and butter and Ms. Cui has no idea what hit her. My manner is self-assured and irreverent. I am cracking jokes right and left, pausing occasionally to flirt with Cui's two secretaries, who also discover that they love me. Everything I say is either insightful or funny, except those comments which are insightfully funny. After about ten minutes of this, it's a Devin love-fest.

Anyway, she gives us our schedules. She explains that I am teaching eight classes of sophomore business majors, and that my classes start in a week. Ronnie, a guy fresh out of college, ends up with all freshman English majors. However, since the freshman don't start until October, he has no classes at all in September. I am honestly enjoying myself too much to even care what my classes are, so I react positively to everything. Ronnie, on the other hand, has just arrived that day and is suffering a severe case of jet lag. I think that he actually nodded off at one point.

By and by we all head home. I'm not in my apartment for two minutes when the phone rings. It's Jessica. "Hello, Devin. I just want to tell you, I'm not well sure why, but Ms. Cui is wear satisfied with you. She think it's good to have someone energetic to teach to the freshmen, so she want change your class with Ronnie. So that mean you don't have a class in September. It's good for you, I think."

So the answer is, not until October. Until then, Cui has me giving a series of lectures to the English faculty on how to teach English. I am the Archduke of ESL. Ronnie, if you ever find this blog - sorry, man. That's how it went down. I didn't have anything to do with it though, so you can't be mad, okay?

问题： "Do you know what they are renovating your dorm/campus towards? Does there seem to be progress?"

Okay, the answer to this absolutely boggles my mind. Get ready for this. Nearly every building on my campus, including my apartment building, is less than four years old. In fact, that's how old this school is. It blows my mind because my building looks like it's from the 1960's. They don't put a lot of quality into the buildings around here because they're only going to tear them down a few years later to make room for a new one. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Like why the surrounding area is still basically a cow-town. And why there are exposed cables and half-finished construction projects everywhere. Get this - the campus currently has enough dorms for 12,000 students. They are working on some more. Enough that they will be able to house, by the end of this year, 20,000 students. Are you grasping this? My school is expanding faster than Andy Richter's gut on open pie night.

I also need to clarify something. I have mistakenly given you all the impression that I work at Wuhan University. As it turns out, this is not so (although the confusion is understandable since Wuhan has about 89 colleges and 500,000 college students). The name of my school is as follows:

The Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Foreign Languages and Foreign Affairs Campus

Apparently two reasonably-sized schools merged to make one mega-school, which is why we have such a ridiculous name.

By the way, I have seen the real Wuhan University (supposedly one of the best schools in China) and it is gorgeous (and immense). I am not normally a jealous person but I think I'll be making some inquiries there in the Spring.

问题： "Is the ramen [in China] like the ramen in Japan?"

For those of you who don't know, ramen is a noodle/soup combo that is very popular in Japan, probably due to the fact that it is obscenely delicious.

To answer the question - I have no idea. I basically have no clue what I am eating on a daily basis - I can neither name nor identify the ingredients of my last six meals. I don't know what ramen is called in China or how it's written. I have had several dishes that involved noodles in some kind of liquid, but I don't think that any of them were ramen for the following reasons:

- they tasted nothing like ramen

-these people REALLY LIKE noodles

My cafeteria offers no fewer than a dozen different noodle-based dishes, about half of which float in some kind of broth. So simply statistically speaking, the odds that I have unknowingly tried ramen are rather slim. When I have more info, I'll let you know.

Here's a double-whammy from my mother:

问题： "What are you doing besides shopping? Shouldn't you be trying to use some Chinese?"

I'm not sure that I care for your accusatory tone, but I'll answer your questions anyway.

I'm pretty much done shopping for now. I've spent the past week or so getting out into the city. As I mentioned earlier, I toured Wuhan U. I also explored a famous temple called Guiyuan, which will be the subject of a future post. Ronnie and I also made it out to Hubu alley (I am not making this up) because it purportedly serves the best street-food in Wuhan during breakfast hours. I can tell you this - I am getting fat here. They have something called "hot-dry noodles" (热干面）, which is sort of like noodles mixed with peanut butter and covered in spicy oil. Everything else is deep fried. It is awesome. I alternate daily between constipation and the alternative - you know the one I mean!

Other than that, I've been exercising, studying Chinese, writing in my blog, keeping in touch with friends, cleaning my apartment, preparing my lectures, and hanging out with the other teachers. We played poker the other night. Martin won. He's not only a dear, dear man, but also quite wily.

As for the Chinese lanuage, give me some time. I can feel it coming. Jessica's giving me lessons, and I'm starting to use it on a daily basis. Eight weeks of classes from six years ago isn't much to fall back on, so it's going to take some time. I expect to be conversational by February.

And finally, the question we're all afraid to ask:

问题： "Have you noticed anything Big Brotherish . . . since you've been there?"

The things I've noticed have been rather subtle, and in fact I may be making assumptions that aren't warranted. I have a feeling that it will be a while before things start leaping out at me (or on me).

One interesting tidbit - the freshman actually arrive next week, but they don't begin classes until October. Why? Because they will engage in three weeks of uniformed military drills. I saw this down the road at a junior high school as well - kids in camouflage fatigues marching in lockstep, led by a military officer. They seemed to be enjoying the 100 degree heat about as much as I was.

Other than that, here's something to consider. Typically internet servers use DHCP, which means that they assign your computer a new IP address every time it logs on to the internet (I know, this is simplified - computer freaks, don't e-mail me). The network in the foreign teachers' building, however, only uses static IP - which means that each of our connections is permanently assigned a specific IP address, which also means that one could track our internet usage, if one was so inclined. Networking preferences, or keeping tabs on the foreigners? You decide.

A buddy of mine told me a story about a friend of his who was teaching in China. One day the police showed up at his apartment and told him to pack up his things, because he was being deported. Which he was, without explanation.

If I start posting this under a pseudonym from an internet cafe, you'll know why.

Keep asking questions, because I'll be doing this periodically. Next post in a couple of days.

好吧。(hao ba)