Arrival in Dazhai

               I have arrived in Dazhai (大寨), the small town in Lincang, Yunnan where I will spend my next two years teaching at Dazhai Middle School. But much has passed between my arrival here and my last blog post, so I will back up briefly and describe what I have been up to over the past few weeks.

               When I last wrote, I was in Dayao, Chuxiong, Yunnan, China, where the Teach for China Summer Institute took place. My time in Dayao was mostly spent preparing to teach class, teaching, going to class myself, and spending time getting to know my co-fellows better.

My fourth grade students were a pleasure to teach. They were, for the most part, smart and eager to learn, though I certainly had to learn to manage the classroom effectively to keep them under control in their wilder moments. It was especially challenging (in a good way, as it is a skill that will undoubtedly be essential here at Dazhai) to manage a student while still keeping them involved and engaged with the lesson. In my less successful moments the result was the steely, fiery look of resolute resistance that I mastered in my own youth. However, my successes resulted in an orderly, fun classroom with students who were engaged and excited.

At the end of the teaching practicum (summer camp for the students), each of the classes put on a brief performance in front of the teachers and their peers. My class prepared a dance routine to a wildly popular Chinese song called 小苹果. I was really impressed by them because somehow they managed to prepare and organize the entire routine themselves (the girls did, that is – the boys were supposed to sing and stand behind the girls [separated by sex by choice of those who wanted to sing and those who wanted to dance – I would have preferred to force mixture if I had been completely in charge rather than working with my co-fellows] while they danced, but in the end they essentially just vaguely sang and awkwardly sat behind the girls as they danced). The best part was the outfit that three of the girls wore for the performance – red fake leather that was mildly reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange or some twisted, modern retelling of the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution. I believe that one of the girls’ mother is a dance teacher and they were able to get the outfits from her. As Ida commented when she saw them though, that may have just been my mind looking for excuses for the ridiculous(ly awesome) outfits.

After Summer Institute officially ended, we were divided up depending on our region. Most all of us were given three or four days off before regional orientation, so a large group of us left Dayao and traveled to Dali for a weekend of rest, relaxation, and, most importantly, western food. It was a fun, expensive weekend full of good people and delicious food.

While in Dali, Ida and I stayed at the same hostel I had stayed at three years before when I first went to Dali, the Five Elements. It was strange to see how it and other places I remembered vividly had changed in the past years. The hostel had expanded and was now about two times the size it had been when I first visited. The bar that I had gone to with Michael during my first visit to Dali, while unchanged in name and atmosphere, had moved several blocks over, completely throwing off my sense of direction.

The changes made me realize how much I had changed since then. When I first arrived in Dali in the summer of 2011, I had taken only one year of Chinese and could barely communicate. I had had one scoliosis surgery, was in regular pain, and was preparing for another surgery once I got back to the US. I was enamored with the idea of meeting people as I traveled (I had Couchsurfed in most of the cities I had stayed in previously), but I had little idea of how to actually do it. I was a student researcher getting my first taste of China.

Now I have taken Chinese for four years. I have lived in Beijing for a year and traveled around more of China than the majority of Chinese people I have met. I am able to hold a passable conversation in Chinese about just about any topic. I have had three surgeries for scoliosis and am essentially pain-free. I have friends from around the world who I have met while traveling (though I still don’t really know how that happened). I am a college graduate preparing for two years of teaching in rural China. Both Dali and I have changed.

Once we got back to Dayao, we had just two short days before my region, Lincang, would leave for the region’s main city, Lincang City, for regional orientation and meeting our principals. It was strange saying goodbye to the middle school that had become home and the people that had become family. The hotel staff (and for that matter, the owners of all the establishments we had supported during our time in Dayao) were sad to see us go, and we were sad to go.

We took a large bus and a truck packed with luggage and rode about nine hours to our hotel in Lincang City. Lincang City is slightly larger than Dayao, but still not a large city by Chinese standards. Teach for China fellows (and, for that matter, local teachers) will often spend weekends in the city. While it does not have a Walmart (unlike Xiaguan in the Dali region) or a KFC (unlike Baoshan City in the Baoshan region), it does have a Salvador’s, a restaurant especially beloved by American fellows for its western food and good coffee.

We had time to relax and get to know Lincang City that evening. The following day was also free apart from a short presentation on the region (mostly repeated or unnecessary information) and a scavenger hunt designed to introduce us to important places in the city (like the supermarket, the best place to get bubble tea, and Salvador’s). Mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed one of our last days together before separating further to our individual regions.

The next day (Friday, August 22) was Principal Day, the day we would all meet our principals to get to know each other and discuss their expectations, the school, our living situation, and the classes we would teach over the next year. The day started early with everyone meeting together in an auditorium in a local middle school across the street from the hotel, where we were told to sit with the principal and the other fellows from our schools. My Chinese co-fellow, Hanxiong, and I found our principal and a local teacher who came with him and began one of the longest, most tiring days of Teach for China thus far.

The first day and a half of meeting with Principal Li, the principal of Dazhai Middle School, were difficult. It seemed like he was interested in Teach for China solely for the benefits it could provide for him. However, it ended up that he would actually be leaving Dazhai for another middle school within a week or two to be replaced by another principal, so we did not have to deal with him long.

After two days of getting to know Dazhai with Hanxiong, I finally had the opportunity to meet the new principal. Feng Xiaozhang (Principal Feng) seems to be, in many ways, the opposite of Li Xiaozhang. They are both similar ages (40 and around 45-ish respectively), similar heights, and similarly balding, but the similarity stops there. Feng Xiaozhang wears glasses over somewhat watery eyes that, along with his voice, betray his emotion as he discusses students. His face is genuine, and he asks and answers questions in a straight-forward, sincere manner.

Principal Feng seemed eager not only to get the most out of having us at the school, but also in ensuring that we would be content as we did it. In discussing classes, he arranged for Hanxiong to teach only three rather than six classes on politics and changed it so I would be teaching Oral English to only the six classes of seventh grade rather than seventh and eighth grade. He asked if I thought I could teach them twice a week (a total of only twelve classes a week) without being too tired. I said yes, and he responded by saying if I did find it to be too much, they could lessen the load.

He went on to say that Hanxiong and I could live together if we wanted to, having our own rooms along with a common area where we could cook. We couldn’t move in yet because it was the old principal’s room, so we would have to wait for him to move out. We will see whether we actually end up being given those rooms, but the change in tone was substantial and meaningful.

Beyond the very positive developments in our class schedules and our living arrangements, Feng Xiaozhang was in general much more receptive of having us there. He was eager for us to start programs and extracurriculars with the students (we were told by the previous fellow that under the previous principal, there were generally only extracurriculars when government officials visited). He wanted us to give suggestions about management and teaching style. He spoke about trying to help connect our students, many of whom have never been outside of Dazhai, with the outside world.

An interesting point of the conversation came up when Feng Xiaozhang began talking about how he wanted us to make sure we paid attention to the worst students. He said that if we did not take care of them, they would drop out of school and become burdens to society. For me, my instinct would be first and foremost to consider the individual student. I would want to help even the worst students realize their potential. While that was my first instinct, I imagine Feng Xiaozhang’s focus on the bad students’ negative impact on society would work well in securing both teacher and government support for those students (teachers in China often focus on the best students with the thought that the bottom will fail out anyway, so they should focus on the students that want to be taught and who can improve their test scores). Also, I imagine that it would help to remind teachers that every student matters even when they are teaching more than three hundred students a week.

All in all, the meeting with the new principal was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I felt like there was a lot of room for me to learn and grow as well as a lot of aspects where I could contribute positively. Here was the sort of relationship I was looking for with my principal. Whereas Li Xiaozhang made me feel like I had to be careful of what I said in any conversation with him, Feng Xiaozhang made me feel empowered, like I wanted to do everything I could for the school. Two very different methods of leadership (one seemingly with an eye up the promotion ladder and the other with all his attention on the students) and two very different responses in me. I hope that my future interactions with Feng Xiaozhang will prove him to be the compassionate, genuine man he appears to be.

For now, I wait, I relax, I walk around Dazhai, I try to get to know locals and teachers, I prepare, and, very rarely, I blog.

Note: My internet is too slow at the moment to upload pictures - they will follow when I have better internet.

Local Laoban Outings

     Over the past week, plans have often been co-opted by the owner of the local hotel that we stay at on the weekends. If you haven't read the previous post in which the hotel Laoban took our photo and asked to hang it in the lobby, I suggest you check it out. After that, my friend Ida and I ran into the Laoban after one of our days teaching at the elementary school. It ends up that the Laoban has a sixth grader who was attending the Teach for China summer camp at the school.
     As soon as he saw us, the Laoban invited us to have lunch with him. Ida and I looked at each other with a kind of bemused expression that visits our faces often in rural China. After a quick interchange of shrugs and half-nods, we responded positively (I should really say "I responded" - the Laoban essentially always speaks with me and not with Ida. She has reported to me that they have made eye contact at least once). However, we were worried that we would not be able to eat and still get back to the middle school for our classes that would begin in under 50 minutes, so we said that we should probably go back with the rest of the fellows and that we could get lunch another time. The Laoban would have nothing of it. He assured us that he would get us back on time and that he would drive us back himself. While we were worried about time, we were also very tired of the school cafeteria, so we agreed and followed him to a restaurant right next to the school. In the end, we had lunch with the Laoban, his wife, his sister, his nephew (who was actually one of Ida's students), and, for some reason, three of the school's security guards. The food was delicious and the Laoban managed to get us back to the school and to our Chinese class earlier than we normally get there. A lesson on why to say "yes" to opportunities that present themselves in rural China.

     This weekend, I was planning on getting all my lesson planning (and blogging) done for the next week or so in the comfort of the hotel. Thus Saturday afternoon found both Ida and myself working on lesson plans and blogging when we were interrupted by a call from the hotel Laoban. Since we were in the midst of being productive, I was tempted not to take the call, but was convinced to by Ida, who wanted to get out and move. When I answered the phone, I was surprised not to hear the Laoban's gruff Chinese, but the excellent English of Yuan Yuan, a Chinese staff member. She told me that she was in the car with the Laoban, and that he was inviting us to go to a nearby ancient town with him (and Yuan Yuan and another Chinese staff member, Stephen, both of whom had been touring Dayao with the Laoban during the morning). Ida and I again shared a brief exchange of shrugs, nods, and raised eyebrows before agreeing to meet them by the hotel (the Laoban's hotel, it should be mentioned) in ten minutes.
     The day after that was full of interesting and fun exploring. We went to a nearby town and visited a Buddhist temple, an old government building, a pond full of flowering waterlilies, and an excellent restaurant. We ran into some other Teach for China fellows who had found their way to the town and struggled to explain how exactly we had found ourselves there with Yuan Yuan, Stephen, and the Laoban. It was hard to describe how we had gotten there. It was somehow connected with us saying yes at questionable yet key moments. I'll have to remember that as I go off to placement.

Mushroom sellers near the ancient town.

The making of canola oil - fascinating.

Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms - Yunnan is famous for wild mushrooms.

Alleyways that remind me of the ancient town in Dali.

Some patterns in a Buddhist temple that made me think of my Mom's zendoodles.

Flight to China and Teach for China Summer Institute

               What was I expecting as I awoke with a jolt of adrenaline two short hours before the first leg of my flight to China and twenty-five long hours before I was due to arrive in Kunming? I had nominally been preparing for this moment and for the two years teaching English in rural Yunnan through Teach for China that would follow for the last month since I had arrived home from my road trip, but serious preparation, both physical and mental, had only really begun over the past week and a half, and it wasn’t until three hours before I woke up for my flight that I had finished packing. But there I was, fully packed and energized by adrenaline, a couple hurried spoonfuls of cereal, and expectations of things to come.

               I didn’t expect much from the flight other than uncomfortable sleep, dry air, a few good stories, and, if I was lucky, an on-time arrival in Kunming (the capital of Yunnan province). My expectations and hopes for once I arrived were much more varied and confused. Near the top of my list was my desire to improve my Chinese, and I was fairly confident that two years in rural China would do so whether I wanted to or not. I hoped to meet and really get to know other American and Chinese Teach for China fellows, but I expected some significant amount of loneliness once I arrived at my placement after the Summer Institute. I expected difficult conditions both at Summer Institute and my placement, but I really had little idea of what sort of details to expect, so I mostly tried to keep expectations low. One of my haziest expectations were of what I would actually be doing during Summer Institute and once I arrived at my placement. While I expected teaching to, of course, be the main object of my attention for the next two years, I had little idea of what that would come down to in terms of how I spent my time day-by-day. Finally, I hoped that I would be able to find a way to continue my study of International Relations (and especially of Sino-American relations) during my next years, whether through a blog or more scholarly articles.

               I had a lot of expectations as I drove with my family to the airport, but I knew that unknown unknowns and thrown expectations were more likely than anything else to define my next two years teaching in rural China.

               The first leg of my flight was uneventful with the exception of excited and emotional goodbyes from most of my parental units at the airport as I left. I slept and prepared myself for the next few challenging legs of the journey. My flight to Vancouver was a little more exciting, as I had the opportunity to sit next to and talk with a very interesting mother and daughter pair. They were headed to Vancouver for an Alaskan cruise (along with, it seemed, about half the plane), and were quite the pair of travel buffs. However, while they had traveled a lot, they had never been to China, which the daughter (eighteen years old) was especially interested in. However, she bemoaned the fact that you needed to have been vaccinated in order to go to China. I nodded sympathetically until I fully realized what she had said, at which point I said something about vaccinations being important for staying healthy in China. The mother tentatively agreed, saying that if her daughter did get vaccinated to travel to China, at least it would be now rather than when she was younger, since “those things are awful for you.”

Around then, I realized that while I might share a love of travel with my seatmates, our worldviews varied rather significantly. We went on to share uncontroversial travel stories until I told the mother about my trip to Machu Picchu and Peru, at which point she responded by saying that, “oh, I believe that is the place that –insert difficult-to-discern name here- meditated and discovered the healing power of energy.” Not quite sure of how to respond, I answered by saying that I didn’t know about that. Well, she was ready to tell me all about it, including a demonstration in which she cupped my left hand in her hands and asked whether I could feel the healing energy. Not wanting to make an enemy out of my seatmate for the next hours or a liar out of myself, I told her that I could not feel anything, likely because of my skeptical mind. The mother, with the confident motion of a missionary, brushed away my doubtful response and focused more closely on my hands, saying that while my skepticism would make it take longer to feel the energy, I would nonetheless feel it. Thrown off by my failure to delicately extract myself from her grasp, I caved and admitted that yes, I did feel some tingling (which seemed consistent to me with simply focusing on it and having it grasped in her hands for five minutes), which achieved the hoped-for result as she released my hand triumphantly, leaving me to my rational skepticism and the mother to her credulous conviction.

      

            When I left Richmond, I had been told that I would have to pick up my bag in Vancouver, go through Canadian customs, and then check it back in for my flight to Beijing. All of this would have to be done in a very short ninety minutes (assuming we arrived on time). When I finally arrived in Vancouver, I was relieved to see that my flight to Beijing was delayed, making it much easier to make it there in time. I also discovered, after forty minutes of waiting for my baggage, that I did not actually have to recheck my luggage, which was good to hear (though it would have been much nicer to hear an hour before). The delayed flight also meant that I would miss my connecting flight in Beijing to Kunming, so I had to talk with Air Canada people to get on a later flight.

Luckily, while Air Canada’s delays and policies were rather infuriating, their staff were an absolute delight (unlike, as I would discover later, some of Air China’s staff). The woman I spoke with not only figured out what flight I could get on to get to Kunming, but also snagged an emergency exit row seat for me and got me a meal ticket for Vancouver.

Thus, with baggage checked away and meal ticket in hand, I was able to enjoy my last meal in North America (sushi) along with the last game of the world cup (my fellow passengers and I hypothesized that the pilots had delayed the flight only because they wanted to watch the world cup final).

While I was waiting for the flight to take off, I ran into Ida, a friend of a William and Mary friend who was headed for Kunming and Teach for China as well. Our mutual friend had shown us both pictures of each other, but with only the vague memory of Facebook pictures to go off of, it took several discrete looks, hesitant eye contact, and questioning mouthing of “Ida?” and “Dylan?” across the gate boarding area to make the connection. We spent the next half hour chatting about our friend and Teach for China and watching the World Cup (we missed the extra time goal by Germany, but were informed of it by our pilot as we prepared to take off) before boarding the plane for Beijing, China, and Teach for China.

My seat on the plane was extraordinary. Emergency exit row seats have the ability, in this very tall man’s opinion, to make a flight, even a thirteen hour flight, comfortable and fun. It was on this flight that the transition to being in China began, with Chinese and English (and French) being broadcast over the intercom, and with two Chinese seatmates. I was seated immediately next to an older Chinese woman who had been visiting her daughter in Canada and a younger Chinese woman who was attending college in the US. The older woman almost immediately tried to set us up with each other, but was disappointed to find out that the younger woman already had a boyfriend. The rest of the flight proceeded uneventfully, with ample amounts of stretched-out sleeping and plenty of movie watching and reading.

The Beijing airport presented another set of challenges and frustrations. To begin with, we had to pick up our luggage and go through customs, a thoroughly frustrating a tiring process (especially for those with luggage for living in China for the next two years). I was relieved to have all my luggage arrive in Beijing (three transfers, including a delay and a flight change, seemed like it might be too much to ask). However, my friend Ida was not so lucky. Though she originally rushed ahead to try to grab her baggage and make it to an earlier flight to Kunming, we ran into each other at the baggage claim as we waited for our luggage and nervously joked about our luggage not showing up. While my two bags and one of Ida’s bags did finally arrive after an agonizingly long amount of time, Ida’s second bag never showed up. The light of hope after finding the first bag was slowly replaced by a mixture of exhaustion, dismay, and slight hysteria brought on by the ridiculousness of it all. Finally, after luggage stopped coming around the carousel, we reported the missing bag to Air Canada with little hope of ever finding it again and entered the chaos of the 3^rd Terminal of the Beijing Airport.

After an annoying interaction with an Air China employee where they made Ida buy a new ticket and made me pay for my second bag again and after a much nicer interaction with another Air China employee who allowed me to pay less than I might have had to for the second bag, Ida and I made our way through security and on to the last leg of our journey (that day) to Kunming. The flight was largely uneventful, with the exception of sitting next to an eight year old boy returning from a trip to Beijing who quizzed me on everything I knew about China and what I was doing there and where I had been. We arrived in Kunming after midnight, about 36 hours after I had left for the Richmond airport, picked up our luggage, and took a taxi to our hostels, exhausted but happy to have finally arrived.

The next day, a large group of fellows made our way, with our mountains of luggage, to the Kunming bus station on to a four-hour bus ride to Dayao, Yunnan, China, where the Teach for China Summer Institute would take place over the next four and a half weeks. As we arrived in Dayao, we were greeted by enthusiastic Teach for China staff and dozens of golden dragonflies skimming all around us in the cool air of Dayao after rain.

Dayao is a very small city in Yunnan known for walnuts and a somewhat significant Confucian shrine. By the looks given to us foreigners by locals, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Teach for China Summer Institute is the most significant influx of foreigners Dayao has ever seen. In general, locals have been very friendly and rather surprised that we would deign to come all the way to Dayao from the United States. We are staying at a middle school in Dayao, living in the dorms normally occupied by the students. Luckily, we share the rooms with only three other fellows rather than the 12 students staying in them during the school year (students in Yunnan and many other more rural parts of China stay at the school during the week and only go home over the weekends). The rooms were a far cry even from the hostel that we stayed at in Kunming, with a cement floor covered in dust and dirt and six metal bunk beds with wooden planks as mattresses (when we arrived, they were also layered with cardboard boxes that appeared to have been used as cushioning by the past residents). However, with a quick cleaning and a thin mattress and sheets purchased from the local market, the room eventually became something approaching homey.

In general, at Summer Institute I have been incredibly and perhaps irrationally content. While Summer Institute has been exhausting and utterly frustrating at times, the people have made it a pleasure to attend. While our beds are wooden planks, our business-casual is jeans and a shirt with a collar, our bathrooms are fly-ridden shitholes, our food is oil-laden, repetitive “fried” vegetables, fatty meat, and rice, our housing is mosquito-filled, dusty dorm rooms shared with three roommates and lacking any trace of privacy, and our seating for classes is two-by-fours nailed to two A-frames supposedly fitting into the genus “bench,” the other Teach for China fellows and staff and the kids that I began teaching last Monday have made the experience thus far one of the happiest times of my life. The other American fellows are, for the most part, intelligent, kind, and dedicated. Many have similar interests as I, but they vary just enough to keep things interesting. The second-year fellows here as our teachers and guides are excellent and experienced, making the whole of Summer Institute feel worthwhile. The Chinese fellows are interested in the much fewer American fellows, and are themselves very smart, talented, and driven. I have had many great conversations with them and look forward to many more. My students, while I have only had them for one week, already provide the necessary context for all of Summer Institute and, for that matter, for Teach for China as a whole. 

Flight over the Pacific

We had a scavenger hunt activity that introduced us to Dayao. Here we are at the end, after hiking up hundreds of steps to the White Tower.

I went for a walk into rural Dayao with Ida - this picture was taken just before we had to get off the road to let a man with a large pig get by followed by a luxury BMW.

On the weekends, we all like to go into the town to relax and stay out later than the 11pm curfew of the Middle School. The morning after just such a night as we were turning in the hotel room key, we found the hotel Laoban (boss) waiting for us, asking if we would take some pictures with him. While several of us were still groggy from the previous night's festivities, we acquiesced. The next weekend, the Laoban showed us this framed gem and asked if he could hang it in the hotel lobby. In short, we are now famous in Dayao, if not China as a whole.

Sunset in Dayao.

For our first day of classes, one of my co-teachers (we each teach one period of math, English, and history respectively and then jointly teach a class of music, art, or games) drew pictures of each of us and our hobbies on the board - the students had to guess which hobbies applied to whom.

We set up an incentive system where the student groups can earn points for participating and being proactive (and lose them for failing to follow class rules) - when they get 10 points as a group they are allowed to roll a die and move their piece on the prize board I drew on the blackboard in the back of the room.

The view from the boys dormitory across the basketball court to the girls dorms and the mountains beyond.

Fourth graders lining up on the first day of classes.

My class of 22 students (I will have many, many more when I go to my placement school).

All the doors at the elementary school have this on it "请讲普通话" or "Please speak Mandarin." Yunnan is full of minorities, and many kids' first language is not Mandarin. When they attend school, they can thus confront an additional barrier of being unable to speak the language used in classroom instruction.

A view from the boys dorm in the pouring rain and the simultaneously shining sun. It rains most days in Dayao, making roads muddy and umbrellas essential.

During one of our music classes, I taught the kids "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," which we proceeded to perform in every conceivable way. In this picture, they were all squeezing onto the platform in the front of class to act as the teacher while I acted as the student. They found my performance lacking and took away 30,000 points from my group.