Summer Project: Small Victories

Each summer in Peace Corps China, program managers from each province help organize teacher trainings and language camps for Chinese English teachers in K-12 settings. Peace Corps volunteers teach lessons on Western style teaching methodologies and help the trainees improve their oral English, so they can go back to their classrooms with fresh ideas and skills. It seems to be a good opportunity to try to instill some of our ideas about communicative teaching and cultural awareness into the younger generation, so hopefully they won't be so shocked when they meet foreign teachers in college for the first time (foreign teachers who ask them to do strange things like work in groups, speak without notes, avoid plagiarism, and think independently). Also it hopefully will provide non-college bound students more opportunities to acquire communicative English language skills which might translate into better job prospects when they test out or can no longer afford to attend school.

I had been looking forward to summer project ever since our winter in-service training session when volunteers from the china 15 group said that it had been one of the highlights of their service. I wish I would have realized at the time that, like most experiences in the Peace Corps so far, enriching experiences like these are generally hard won (but still worthwhile) and usually require a large investment of effort in what seem, on the surface, to be minor victories. In our favor, we have an amazing, supportive and motivated program manager, so our Chongqing project was planned far in advance, and we felt pretty lucky to have the extra time to organize ourselves, review curriculum and plan lessons. This is especially appreciated in light of the lead time we are usually afforded in China, as we usually only know about school events or teaching schedules a week in advance (at the most).

We were recruited into the group for teaching middle school teachers, and we decided to cut our workload and narrow our focus into 2 day blocks, so each pair of us could be "experts" in a certain topic such as reading, grammar, pronunciation, etc. Richy and I decided to focus on writing, since I had had success teaching it over the last two terms. We scoured the summer project curriculum for useful lessons on methodology and mined and modified our own lesson stockpiles to create two days of classes that we hoped would be useful for Chinese middle school teachers looking to supplement their curriculum and help engage their students in the process of learning English. We also wanted to introduce them to some basic theoretical frameworks to understand the methods of teaching English from a Western perspective.

As so often happens with "the best laid plans" in China, the actual execution of our summer project turned out to be significantly more challenging. The first obstacles were the expectations of the trainees. Not much information had been communicated beforehand, so some teachers were expecting a crash course in improving their oral English skills, while others assumed we would be showing them directly how to adapt lessons from their textbooks into Western style lessons.

Another problem was that several (especially older) teachers felt embarrassed engaging in some of the activities meant to model some of the methods of engagement in middle school classrooms. We were suddenly met with non participating trainees boasting a litany of excuses: "I can't see," "I can't write," "I can't speak English well," and "I'm too old to play games." We wondered how they could teach with such debilitating issues. Actually, there were just finding indirect ways to tell us that they weren't into our classes. Our frustrations were best summed up in the question "Why are we here if you don't want to learn what we have to offer?" An education official from Beijing came on the third day of the training and did her best mediate what she correctly identified as a "culture clash." Her comments reflected a deep understanding of both sides of the culture divide, and the way she addressed us directly and honestly was much appreciated. Although, later we all had to take a collective deep breath and soldier on, after the blow of realizing that our teaching wasn't exactly dazzling the audience.

We realized that the teachers in the training were experiencing similar reactions and emotions to what we had experienced in our first weeks in China. Expectations and reality were so different that the temptation to disengage was strong. You can imagine that if your entire worldview and methods of teaching were being challenged, that the concept of change and adaptation can be daunting and exhausting. Of course, from our perspective, we felt like we were already being pretty flexible. After all, we had already agreed to a 3 hour lunch break in the middle of a 4.5 hour day of teaching in order to accommodate the southern Chinese custom of napping in the middle of the day to avoid the heat.

As the days passed, we modified our lessons with each rotation, and it seemed that many of the trainees were starting to understand what we were trying to accomplish. By the final day, we met as a whole group to discuss and brainstorm what had been learned during our two weeks in Wulong. This is some of what they shared:

- How to encourage student confidence
- Teaching for multiple intelligences
- Classroom management
- American culture
- How to take student abilities in to account (differentiated instruction)
- Writing skills
- Independence, open mindedness
- How to write a haiku
- Confidence and bravery for speaking English in the classroom

By the end of the session, the list had more than 20 items. It was heartwarming to see the list unfold, and to see that lessons from each of the volunteers were mentioned. It was that small victory to end a challenging couple of weeks.

Throughout our time in Wulong, one of the middle school trainees had been designated as our translator, as her spoken English was clear and fluent. This meant that she attended every official dinner and trip, and acted as our tour guide when we visited the natural sites of Wulong including the natural bridges and Furong cave. To show our appreciation, we took up a collection to buy her a "thank you" gift. We presented her with a handmade thank you card and a small box of chocolates (a luxury in China) and her tearful response, although unexpected, was another small victory. Her response reminded me that although it might not seem like we made a big difference on the surface, the training had a personal impact on everyone there, and if even a fraction of them learned something meaningful from it to share with their future students, then the effort was worth it.

~Katie

Haifeng Wetland

Another item to add to the list of things I will never take for granted again (which already includes PNW weather in all forms, cheese, good beer, and clean tap water): camping. It had been more than a year since our last tent and campfire related adventure in the wilderness. When we took that trip to Umpqua hot springs last June, I didn't quite imagine how the memory of it would have to sustain me for so long in the misty concrete and jackhammer jungle of Chongqing.

About a month ago, my friend and language-exchange partner, Elle, invited Richy and I on a road trip. Excited at the prospect of a road trip, but fearful of steep accommodation prices, I recommended camping as a budget alternative, and she seemed happy with the idea. She also offered to pay for all the expenses of the trip, another example of the amazing feats of generosity Richy and I have been treated to as volunteers. After a few weeks of going back and forth about dates, possible destinations and whether there would be any guests other than Richy, Elle, her son Max, and I, we finally settled on a trip to Haifeng Wetland in Yunnan province, with stops on the way there and back at a couple of tourist sites in Guizhou province.

The trip began when Elle and Max pulled up at our building with their newer model, green Jeep SUV. It was spacious and comfy, with an ice cold AC, definitely a welcome reprieve from the over 100 degree humid heat that has been swamping Chongqing lately. Our first destination would be an "ancient town" on the outskirts of Guiyang.

In China, especially with second-tier tourist attractions that cater to a domestic rather than international crowd, the extent of "remodeling" can be a bit heart-wrenching. Qingyan ancient town was built about 700 years ago under the Ming dynasty, and remodeled under the Qing, but today the city walls stand bright, white and new, topped with gold tinted fiberglass figures of warriors, weapons and horses. The idyllic surrounding farmland is being turned into new "villa" style townhouses. When we arrived at the inn in the middle of the ancient city where we were supposed to stay the night, we found out they no longer accepted guests there because they preferred to sleep in the newer, less authentic lodgings outside the city walls. Fortunately, wandering the interior alleys of the town, you can still find some ancient architecture unscathed, while local school kids hunker under the shade of hundred year old trees to do their homework. We enjoyed some traditional bing fen (an icy unflavored jello-like substance mingled with rosewater, brown sugar, candied pears, sesame seeds and peanuts) in the shade of the trees before heading back out of the city to find the newer place to stay.

The next day, we embarked on our journey into Yunnan toward our camping destination of Haifeng wetland (not to be confused with the coastal wetland of the same name). Haifeng is an inland wetland in Zhanyi county, with salty blue water, shellfish, and gorgeous karst formations. The road out to the wetland was lined with farming villages, apple and peach orchards, and lush fields of tobacco and marigolds. The weather was perfect - sunny blue skies, a few puffy white clouds and a cool breeze strong enough to keep us cool and the mosquitoes at bay. We set up our camp, cooked up a dinner of pasta, canned fish and corn-on the cob (in typical Chinese generosity, our camp neighbors shared their potatoes, corn and tofu with us). After dark we built a campfire by the water where I showed Max how to make "real American" s'mores, and then Richy showed him the constellations.

The next morning, we woke up to find that some local dogs had come through the camp, mangling our tofu and stealing our corn. Richy and Elle had both heard the dogs in the night, and I think it had left Elle a little spooked. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast of bacon, potatoes and duck eggs, then took a walk to the edge of the wetland with Max, where Richy and Max enjoyed wading into the mud (unfortunately Richy's Chacos didn't survive the mud suction, and came out with broken straps). Upon returning, we realized that the dogs in the night and a rumor of impending rain had cut our camping trip short. Elle's tent was already packed. It all came to an end too soon, with only 16 hours of camping, but it was a glorious 16 hours.

Seven hours into our drive back to Chongqing, Elle pulled into the entrance for Hongfeng Lake, a reservoir in Guizhou, which Elle had apparently visited several years prior. The place had definitely seen better days, but we enjoyed a thrilling boat ride, some delicious food and cold beer. The next morning we toured a Disney-style version of a Dong minority village, and had our pictures taken in Dong minority clothing, complete with embossed aluminum headdresses. I don't think the concept of cultural appropriation has quite caught on in China.

All in all, with 26 hours of driving and 16 hours of camping, we definitely got to see more of the Chinese countryside and highway infrastructure than we're used to, and it was nice to have more time to spend with Elle and Max. Here's to hoping our next camping trip will be less than a year away and longer than 16 hours!

~ Katie

Best Waiban Trip Ever!

What we call "the waiban" is properly translated as the Office of International Cooperation at our school, formerly the Office of Foreign Affairs. They are the ones who deal with our visas, provide us with housing (and deal with any problems that arise with said housing) and generally make sure we're doing our jobs. This office is also in charge of the foreign students who come to study at our school (currently two students from a college near Busan in South Korea). Every term, the office takes us on one all-expense-paid outing to keep us happy and make sure we all get to enjoy some of our time in China.

Last term, the trip involved eating a big lunch of a freshly butchered (within earshot) pot of chicken soup with pickled vegetables (fresh and tasty but disturbing), followed by a trip to the driving range at a golf course outside the city. When we arrived, we found the driving range had recently been closed pending demolition to make way for more "villas" (aka. Western-style townhouses) so we ended up just hitting balls from the tee-off area of the course for several hours. This was followed by another large meal of traditional Sichuan-style food. We came home feeling tired and full, but it wasn't anything to write home about (until now).

This term our waiban liaison actually asked us what we wanted to do. She listed climbing a few mountains as options, or rafting in a river on the border between Chongqing and Guizhou province. We expressed preference for the river trip (climbing mountains in the heat and humidity is less appealing). Unfortunately that plan was nixed by the waiban director because of liability issues. Granted, I am sure Chinese river rafting trips are not heavy on the safety equipment. Instead, our liaison choose to buy us all a spot on a tour of Hei Shan Gu, or Black Mountain Valley. I had heard of other PCVs being taken there by their host families, and they seemed to like it, so I was reasonably excited about it. The tour can be done two ways: hiking the whole way, or hiking part way and taking a tram and a cable car at either end of the valley. Our group opted for the tram and cable car route. Despite the fact that Richy and I would have liked more exercise, one of the student assistants accompanying us had decided that four-inch platform suede heels with silver studs would be appropriate footwear for a nature trip.

The scenery was gorgeous, the air was clean, and although we were able to surmise from our tour guide's Chinese spiel that the area was famous for monkeys and red fleshed kiwi fruits, we didn't see either. It was rainy enough to keep the air cool, but not so rainy that we couldn't enjoy ourselves. The pine trees, mist and clear water reminded me of home, and the frequent rope bridges kept us entertained (including one built like an obstacle course specifically for entertainment). It was a perfect break from the jackhammers and hustle of Chongqing city.

But our trip wasn't over yet. After taking the tour bus back into the city, we caught a cab to enjoy dinner at a hotpot restaurant, an experience we have come to enjoy as long as it happens less than twice a month. Being almost all foreigners in attendance (two Koreans, three Americans and two Chinese), the dishes were all basic meat, tofu, and vegetables, with the exception of one plate of cow stomach lining which I think Miss Studded Platform Heels ordered. Quenching the burn with a pitcher of freshly made peanut milk, it was one of the more pleasant hotpot experiences we've had thus far. After dinner, we bid the Korean students and Miss Studded Platform Heels adieu (or rather, "annyeonghi gaseyo") as they boarded a bus back to their dorms on the new campus.

With a few hundred kuai leftover in the petty cash envelope, our liaison invited the rest of us to enjoy a massage at a nearby foot massage parlor. Richy and I still had yet to experience Chinese massage, so we readily agreed, while Carol (the other American teacher on the trip) declined since she goes to the same place to get foot massages weekly anyway, and she was ready to turn in for the night. So the three of us headed off to a place called something like "Foot Massage City." Our liaison said that less than a year ago, a 90 minute massage at this place was only 35 kuai (like $5) but that with a recent renovation the price had jumped to 68 kuai (more than $10). Nonetheless, it was said to be the best spot in town, so it was probably worth the higher price.

The massage room included three large recliners with tea, blankets, and a big screen tv on the wall. We settled in, and three women came in and washed our feet in buckets of hot tea. They dried us off, then came back a few minutes later, oiled up our feet and poked, prodded, and pulled on our toes for about 30 minutes. Next, they massaged our legs, then had us flip over as they mashed their elbows and knees into our thighs and backs. The liaison asked me if I wanted them to "use a special massage tool" on my back, as it was an option included in the price. She said she forgot the English name for it, so I suggested "Is it like a back roller?" and she said "Yeah, I think so." So I laid there, thinking they were going to come back with a back roller. Instead she came back with a little bowl with some sort of stick shaped object in it. Our liaison said, "Oh, by the way, you can't take a shower for six hours after you have this done." What were they going to do? Before I had a chance to think about it, the masseuse had pulled my shirt over my head and unhooked my bra. Oil was smeared all over my back and I was being repeatedly scraped by something. It didn't hurt any more than the gruff massaging, so I just relaxed and tried to enjoy the strange sensation. After a few minutes, she wiped off the excess oil, and came back with a hot grain filled pillow which she rolled all over my back. It was very nice. She hooked up my bra and pulled my shirt back down, and continued to massage my neck, face and hands. When 90 minutes was up, we gathered our things and headed home, thanking our liaison profusely for what turned out to be quite the awesome and relaxing trip.

It wasn't until I got home that I looked at my back and figured out what they did to me! Upon looking in the mirror, I realized the tingling that I had been feeling on my back since the massage was emanating from bright red, hickey-like marks. Turns out it was Gua Sha, sometimes called "spooning" or "coining" in English, the purpose of which is to cure ailments by "scraping bad wind" out of the body. Although it's folk medicine, its similar to acupuncture in that some Western medicine practitioners are starting to pick up on the practice, although its efficacy in actually treating anything are yet to be proven. It also follows along the same theory as the practice of "cupping" (glass cups heated on your back to suck up your skin, leaving distinctive red circles) which we saw a lot of at the bathhouses in Korea. I can imagine with all the tingling it might be eliciting some kind of immune response, but I'm no doctor. Either way, it looks pretty cool.
~ Katie

Cultural Re-revolution

There has been a lot in the local Chongqing news lately about Bo Xilai's efforts to bring back the "red songs" of the Mao era and generally spruce up the city with the Five Chongqings campaign (Translated as: Forest Chongqing, Livable Chongqing, Traffic-smooth Chongqing, Healthy Chongqing and Safe Chongqing). I see a lot of billboards and posters about the Five Chongqings and see the results of the campaign in thousands of trees (even some fully grown 2 ft diameter ones) being planted along roads and in newly reconstructed parts of the city, with the rapid completion of metro lines, and new outdoor police stations springing up on every street corner. But I haven't seen (or heard) any evidence of the return of the red songs. At least not until last weekend.

The past several weeks on campus, we have witnessed a quickened pace in the many construction projects on campus in the run-up to the big 60th Anniversary celebration of the college's founding. On the North Campus (where we live, but where no classes take place) they finished a new parking garage and installed a park with badminton courts on top, repaved all the pathways, installed new landscaping along the fences and tore down an old building to construct a new campus gate. On the New Campus (where we go everyday to teach our classes, and where we have a new dorm to sleep at occasionally) they installed giant countdown clocks for the May 18th Anniversary and the May 21st celebration, hung giant red lanterns and streamers along all the roads, turned an empty lot into giant park with a lake in the middle, began to turn a drainage ditch into a decorative pond, opened a fancy on-campus hotel, completed landscaping around our dorm building (despite the bottom floors being unfinished inside) and covered all the student dorm buildings with giant red banners. So needless to say, the fact that the 60th Anniversary celebration was coming was not a surprise.

What was a surprise, was being invited to the ceremony one early morning bus ride by the assistant director of the foreign relations office. I had feared the invitation because I was afraid they would ask us to give a speech in front of a giant crowd, but luckily there was no such obligation. She simply asked if we would attend that Friday evening, so we agreed. All classes were canceled for Friday, so Richy and I didn't arrive until early evening and were amazed by the thousands of students milling around campus. Usually the campus has a more somber, sleepy tone. It actually felt kind of like an American campus, where students were just lounging around, laughing, and generally enjoying the day. Of course the fact that they were all wearing matching t-shirts depending on their major was a big difference...

Around the time that the ceremony was set to begin, we wandered over to the field and found a red carpet catwalk lined with about 10 women in matching dresses standing at attention on either side. The carpet lead to rows of plastic stools, with a few executive style desks and chairs in the front. We didn't want to be presumptuous, and we didn't see anyone from the foreign relations office to guide us to our seats, so we sat down on the plastic stools (later we found out that some executive style seating had been reserved for us). The stage was set up with several giant screens, stage lights and spot lights, and real television cameras and sound booms were swinging about. The students in attendance had all been given multicolored light sabers. There was definitely an outdoor-concert vibe, and the elderly gentlemen seated in front of us kept holding up and taking photos with a banner that proclaimed they were the petroleum majors of '66, '67 and '68. I wondered what they were thinking about how their little petroleum college had changed since then (it merged with the polytechnic college 7 years ago to become the giant Chongqing University of Science and Technology - 20,000 students strong).


I was feeling sleepy and sticky in the 85 degree humidity, but when the announcers came to the stage in full formal attire and a giant spotlight, the students all started screaming with glee and waving their giant light sticks. Obviously, everything said was in Chinese, but I could pick out enough of what they were saying to know they were wishing the college a happy birthday and talking about how great and awesome everything was. The first act were the petroleum majors (generally considered the most impressive major at our college). About 50 students in matching red pants, shiny hardhats and suspenders poured onto the stage. The screens lit up with panoramas of oil derricks back lit by a sunset. It wasn't until they started singing and dancing (using their hardhats as props) that I realized that this was Bo Xilai's red song campaign manifest.



These are the fire safety majors.

I think they should have been theater majors.The petroleum majors, with their inspiring oil-themed backdrop.
It wouldn't be a red song campaign without Mao's face on Tiananmen.

This was the view of the concert space from earlier in the day. You can see why our expectations weren't too high.

~Katie

Summer Cometh

Springtime in Chongqing was short and sweet. Just two weeks ago, I was padding around the apartment in my fuzzy winter slippers and a cardigan. Now, I'm sleeping sans pajamas under the sarong my mom so kindly sent me from her trip to Hawaii (thanks mom!). The question now is: how long can we make it before the temptation to use the air conditioner becomes too strong? Our two weekends of "spring," as I would consider it, involved a day trip to Fuling on the 16th to plant trees as part of a public relations event for foreign students and teachers in Chongqing and then some Earth Day/Easter-ness with our Chinese people in Chongqing. For the Fuling trip (the same town that is the setting for Peter Hessler's Rivertown) we got matching t-shirts and hats, tromped through the mud and rain to dig a couple holes in the ground and put trees into them and take pictures (to be fair, there was close to 400 people there so I think at least a couple hundred trees got planted). We then took a tour of the famed zhacai (pickled mustard tuber) factory, which was about as interesting as factory tours can be. We did get a few packs of free zhacai for our effort. For Earth Day I gave my students an overview of the holiday and showed the film Erin Brockovich, which I am hoping will encourage them to think more about how they can advocate for environmental issues in China. I then colored Easter eggs with my nine year old tutoring buddy Max, who I tutor in English in exchange for his mom tutoring me in Chinese. I drew a bunny face on one, and he drew a monster rat on another. On Sunday, instead of a traditional Easter dinner, we had a vegan Easter meal with a couple of our Chinese artist friends, my vegan PCV friend Kim, and a few Chinese friends of hers. It was low key and we spent the afternoon chatting, doing an interview for the PCV Rice Paper publication with the two Chinese vegetarians in attendance, and working on the recycling craft projects that Kim and I have been working the past couple months (mostly knitting with plastic bags).

Yesterday, at 34 C (93 F), we participated in our college's sports day craziness, which involved an 8:00 am "free breakfast" of white sugar bread and boxed milk (which they seem to think is a "Western style breakfast") followed by a nationalistic opening ceremony (apparently not as spectacular as previous years) and then a somewhat confusing "relay" that involved six people running around cones holding hands. When asked what we would call that sport in English, we coined the term "amoeba relay" which only led to confusion when the English-Chinese electronic dictionaries were busted out. Yes, small organisms that live in fresh water. No, we can't really explain why that makes sense in English. At 10 am, with the sun rising hotly in the sky, we ran the first real relay of the day, a 20 person 50 meter dash in which 10 people lined up on either side of the 50 meter marks and passed the baton back and forth while running between them. It was harder standing in the sun waiting for the baton than it was to run the 50 meters. Richy and I quickly established ourselves as some of the strongest runners of the foreign language department team, which is another way of saying that foreign language teachers at our school are not the most athletic. The ruffians in the engineering and mathematics departments put us to shame.

We got a respite from the glaring sun with a banquet-style lunch at the nearby Sunny Block (Xi Jie) shopping area, which serves as kind of a miniature entertainment district to keep the college students in University Town entertained. We hadn't been out for this kind of meal for a few months, and such banquets are much more enjoyable when they are few and far between. It's easier to enjoy the abundance of oil and spicy dishes when you aren't recovering from eating them just a few days prior. We got back to campus with a few hours to spare before the next relay at 4:00 pm, so we went to our campus apartment to cool off and take a nap.

The 100 meter relay was a little more challenging physically, and also more formal, with starting blocks and numbered jerseys. Our team came in last in both the women's and the men's event (there's just no beating those petroleum engineers), but we were glad to have participated and be done with it.

The most interesting part of these school sports events is that it gives us a rare chance to socialize with the other teachers in our department, since being foreign teachers puts us in an awkward place in the school structure - not quite integrated with the foreign relations department, and not quite integrated with the foreign language department. We have our own office, just for the five of us foreign teachers, and we don't really get a chance to see any of the Chinese English teachers on a regular basis. The awkwardness of obligatory team sports gives us something to talk about. We met a teacher from the PE department who spoke English surprisingly well and told me how interested he was in history (Richy pointed out that PE teachers all over the world seem to have the same interests: history and sports), an English teacher who was apparently good friends with a previous PCV at our school who seemed interested in taking us out to dinner sometime, and two young foreign language teachers at our school who teach Spanish and Arabic respectively (and who at first assumed that I was German - I'm used to being mistaken for Russian, German is a new one). Richy pointed out how interesting it was to have an English conversation with a Chinese girl who kept slipping into Spanish accidentally.

We have also started with a new Chinese tutor two nights a week which is giving us a lot more speaking and conversation practice. Next week, after the Labor Day holiday, we'll start teaching an intensive course to teachers who will be doing visiting scholar programs abroad this summer and next school year. Then we'll be heading off to Wulong for our summer project in July, where the Chongqing 16s (that's the 16th group of China PCVs) will be teaching English teaching methods to a group of more than 300 elementary, middle, and high school teachers. We are also hoping to find some time this summer to do a two-week language intensive in another city before Richy's sister Sara, and her fiancee Tim, come to visit us in August.