After I got back from Hangzhou I immediately had to start doing the final tests for the students. I wasn’t expecting to have to do them so soon because, you know, school wasn’t going to end for another 2 months for them. However, they need to spend those two months preparing for their actual important classes. They want to free up my class period for study time.
So here’s some snails I found inside of a giant plant near the cafeteria. I didn’t even realize that plant had any sort of fruit attached to it:
Oh no my favorite art store! Argh noooooo! I’ve been having to use the back pages of my sketchbooks now. Hate doing that.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the “incidents” involving knives, random middle-aged men, and students in China. Pretty much has everyone freaking out. The whole thing confuses me because it’s like “So-and-so killed 5 students and 8 adults” and I’m just kind of… how do you kill that many adults with a knife? Like I understand it if it’s with a gun, but these people did it with knives. In one case it was a guy with a hammer. You can run from a knife, you can block a knife, you can hit a knife with a chair, etc. Can’t do any of those things with a gun. If a knife wielding person was going against four people, maybe even just two people, the knife will lose. It’s not an instant kill weapon like a gun seems to be.
Anyway the opinion from Chinese people I’ve talked to and the newspapers on average is “well they just went crazy and did it” but… I can’t help but think there’s more to it than that? IIRC like two of the guys were super depressed but couldn’t afford medication or something. I mean there’s so much pressure on people here to be a certain way and do certain things, even if you really really don’t think that those are right for you. I can find it easy to believe that someone might just snap.
You also have all the Foxconn suicides (which are not the only suicides, just the most well publicized because it’s a supplier to those damn foreigners and it’s owned by Japan even though it is actually a Chinese company founded and registered in Taiwan). The reason people keep pointing to the suicides at Foxconn is that there is really no mental health services involved. They basically have a constantly rotating staff, so much so that you never really learn who your roommate is because they’ll just be gone tomorrow. This is hard for all social creatures such as humans, but I can’t imagine it being easier for people who are in a society that puts so much importance on those interpersonal relationships. It seems very uncommon for people here to ever seem to do anything by themselves (something that annoyed foreigners doing business here all the time like “damn make your own decision dude, it’s your job”). It’s always with a friend or at least a colleague or someone. That independence streak of wanting to go out and do something yourself is very low here.
So what the newspapers have been saying and what I completely agree with is that there is an extreme lack of mental health services here both official and unofficial (which is what the newspapers don’t mention). Just venting occasionally is frowned upon here. People always have this sort of layer between themselves and their friends. It’s always there, no matter what. There is never complete openness and ability to talk about absolutely anything with anyone. It is seen as ideal in this society to let things build up inside of you, don’t cause trouble, don’t speak out, do things in a subtle way (which is never totally satisfying and often leads to misinterpretation) instead of confronting them head on and doing something about it. Something as simple as talking directly to the person you’re mad at instead of talking to someone else is frowned upon. I remember a couple of times that I was going absolutely crazy because I couldn’t go yell at my boss about being stupid and, frankly, disrespectful to me because I didn’t know who the hell my boss was. I always had to do it through someone else and then she would get the brunt of his wrath instead of me. That’s bullshit right there. Don’t shoot the messenger, yell at me about it unless you’re chicken.
Buckaw buck buck buck!
Anyway I’m certainly not excusing the actions of school stabbers, I’m just annoyed that when the subject comes up people just dismiss them as crazy without even asking for a moment: why? Why have so many stabbings and suicides happened recently? Why are they happening more and more? What is driving them to do this? Yes you have to be not-normal to do those things, but something set them off. Especially because most of them were seen as “normal” with families and well paying jobs and stuff before they somehow just turned “crazy” one day. What’s that about? That doesn’t “just happen”. If it did “just happen” it’s awfully strange how it’s “just happening” more and more.
I mean certainly my reasons could be wrong, but they could also be right. The confusion of what is going on culturally in this society mixed with the massive amounts economic and social pressures don’t exactly make for calm seas. If I said this to someone here I would be dismissed of course because I’m not Chinese so I don’t know what I’m talking about. Outsider’s opinions are the worst opinions (the exact opposite of home).
So in order to make people feel more safe the government has upped the amount of police at school campuses. We haven’t had a school attack since. Or… have we? State run newspapers aren’t exactly the best places to get news that might not be good for the state. It’s like asking me to list my faults, don’t particularly want to do that.
The junior campus of my school is important because it’s literally across the street from the police training station. If someone goes crazy and stabs someone at this school that would probably be the worst thing to happen to the government here ever. There are like 5 police officers at the gates of the school, and one of them usually carries around a long metal pole that I think is supposed to catch people and hold them against a wall.
The police seemed pretty alert. If they saw a guy just standing on the street watching the kids (honestly, I think “watching stuff” is the national pass-time here) they would go ask him what he was doing and if he was picking up a student. If not, they would tell him to move along. Frankly that’s a good thing. What kind of weirdo watches a bunch of 13 year olds leaving campus when they’re not your kids? That’s weird. We’d do that at home too. They never asked the women this of course because women wouldn’t kill children.
Man I’m getting tired of making sure my blog remains el blockoed in China:
Here’s the one police officer at my school. Why does my school get less police officers? I really like this photo though. I asked him if I could take a picture and he was like “yeah!!” and I was like “awesome!” BTW I know some people who were hanging out with their police officers at their school and they let them stick fight with the police clubs. Police here are so relaxed:
Aright so on to some less morbid stuff. Have I ever shown you how hard it is to find proper cheese in Wal-mart here? Here’s the “milk” section:
Well there’s the mozzarella and some other sort of spread. There are many, many, many processed cheese options. That stuff you see in the top right is what most people here consider to be cheese:
Oop, there’s what I was looking for. This is its normal placement by the way. When they run out they put it back right here again:
Here’s some students practicing magic behind the school:
I found this encouraging remark as the desktop in one of my classes:
The backs of each of the classrooms usually have some big mural painted on it. This was the one in the same class. Avatar mixed with national pride. BTW, what’s the difference between nationalism and patriotism? I can’t figure it out, they both seem to be talking about the same thing but one is positive and one is negative. Kind of like how in ads they’ll say “adds moisture” instead of “adds wetness”:
That sign is the countdown until the Gao Kao, the largest and most important test in China. They try to compare it to the SAT but I mean… it’s just not comparable. The Gao Kao actually affects whether you’ll even go to college whereas the SAT is like “well… what college are you more able to attend?” It’s really just a new version of the imperial testing system. If you fail the Gao Kao it’s like… death. You’ve brought so much shame to yourself and your family. You were your family’s one hope to rise out of whatever social or economic situation they were in and you blew it. There’s no brother or sister to pass the torch on to; it’s all you. Way to go loser.
So they have this big count down sign that they put up a long time ago (as we all know, the more pressure you apply to someone the better their work will be). The senior 3 students are taking their picture in front of it. That sign, and I’m not being sarcastic, is a big part of their life right now:
Speaking of signs here’s a new one that they just installed. It made me laugh for some reason. *BONK*:
There was another singing competition. They do that a lot here, people love to sing in China:
The students were sorting newspapers for some reason. It looked like they were going through and taking out a certain page from each paper. Dunno why. No, I highly doubt it’s a vast “keep that info from the public” conspiracy. I should’ve asked but I didn’t, I must have been in a rush.
Kittens at night near the cafeteria. I wonder why I always see more feral kittens in China than puppies:
Almost the End of School
So here’s a comic:
Hahahaha man… love it… I’m laughing just thinking about it. I remember this joke fondly. Maybe this is why some of my students hate me. I remember one student saying: “Nooooo why would you do that?”
Me:“Cause it makes me laugh”
Charlie Brown: “Aaaaaugh”
Anyway the test was fun so they quickly forgave me. My tests are always fun, I don’t know why they keep getting scared of them. My tests are the only ones that ask for creativity (something they always say they wish they could have more of on tests). The idea of it was to take the ending of any movie they wanted and change it into something else. They could change it into being something better, something worse, whatever. Didn’t matter as long as everyone spoke.
So here’s some photos from their presentations. Yet again they bring out guns in class (that I then got to play with):
This one was like Frankenstein mixed with The Ring or something. The one problem I have with these presentation style tests is that I don’t get to really appreciate the story because I’m spending too much time trying to figure out their names so I can grade them. They always do good things like change groups or not wear a name tag or write it with yellow highlighter on white paper:
This is one of my favorite classes. It’s my only class where I almost always fail to finish the whole lesson because they’re so talkative. It’s great. In this picture they are about to start hitting people with pillows and magic wands and calling it “God’s love” (much to the chagrin of the only Christian in the class):
Same class, this was Iron Man 2: Iron Man versus Russian Iron Man. Apparently the rivalry between Iron Man and Russian Iron Man started because of a painting competition. A long time ago they tied for first to win the prize candy bar. However, there was only one candy bar so they fought over it. Then, in college, they fought over a girl they both fell for. After the flashbacks were over they said: “Whoa wait! This whole time we fought just for candy and a girl!” then they hug it out. Very touching.
This picture was taken right in the beginning when they’re fighting. A quarter of a second after this photo was taken my student on the left knocked over that clock on the wall resulting in a floor full of broken glass. He’s actually in the process of knocking the clock down in this photo. Another teacher burst into the classroom like “What’s going on??” or something. I don’t know what they said. They might have burst in saying: “Owen is an irresponsible teacher!” or “Russian Iron Man don’t hit Iron Man!”
Other highlight moments in the redone endings:
- “I’m Snow White and I like apples. My mother abused me and now I live with seven short guys.”
- 2012: Cusack to scientist: “I have something to tell you. The earth is going to be destroyed you know?”
- Romeo and Juliet: Juliet’s Father: “No no, you can’t love Romeo. Go home… *long pause*… and shut up.”
- “Scissors Edward”
- Ghandi: Ghandi goes on a kung fu killing spree to save his homeland.
- Snow White: When she’s kissed by the prince she wakes up to the Popeye theme and haduken’s the queen.
- “Oh no, Domboldore! He is dead!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes I’m serious!”
“Oh no, my friend Principle Dumbledore, he has died!”
- Slumdog Millionare: “I have no money, I cannot save Latika! How incapable I am!”
- “Snow White and little men”
- Frog Prince: Magic person turns them into humans: “Now you’re human beings again!”
“Really??”
“Yep.”
- I don’t remember what preceded it, but someone jumped into a scene yelling “Coincidence!”
- “Snow White and the Seven Littles.” In this version of Snow White they travel through the lands very quickly and easily by using the “Whatever door” which transports them to wherever they want to go. Pretty cool.
- Titanic: Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio have sex (complete with noises behind the podium and throwing clothes upward). Rose throws her ex-fiancee into the sea. He comes back as Frozone from the Incredibles and causes icebergs to crash into the ship. Then Ye Wen (Also known as IP Man aka Bruce Lee’s kung fu teacher) and Ultraman try to fight him. They fail. Then the Titanic turns into a Transformer and fights him and wins. Rose falls in love with the titanic and marries it.
- “We cannot be married! We are from different worlds! I am a human being and you are a King Kong!”
- “I don’t need babies, I don’t need money, I don’t need diamond, I just need King Kong.” Then King Kong killed Adrian Brody with his armpit stench (King Kong played by a small Chinese girl).
- I don’t remember the movie it was supposed to be, but Kobe Bryant was talking smack talk to LeBron James: “Ah! How rubbish you are!”
- Some world war two movie I didn’t know. First off, someone with an accent trying to imitate someone with a different accent is hilarious. Second is the Italian guy in a Nazi camp making this very Italian analogy: “Oh they make me do so much work! I’m as thin as bamboo!”
- “Foldemore!”
- Romeo and Juliet: “I want to dead!” and then “To be or not to be is a question!” Then she tried to slit her wrists with a potato chip but it didn’t work. Then she tried to hang herself with a noodle. Eventually the priest put her out of her misery.
- Zombieland: Someone in the midst of being eaten by zombies: “Oh my god! Here is an emergency situation!”
- Snow White/Avatar: The evil queen and the prince’s hair accidently touch and they fall in love, forgetting all about snow white. Then they commit suicide. I don’t know what was up in that class, just about every presentation included suicide… :-/
- Romeo and Juliet: Romeo doesn’t like Juliet because she’s ugly. At one point, after partying, he says: “Oh what a great night. I always have such great nights.” Juliet wants Romeo to love her so she takes a sexy potion. Romeo is really really impressed and says this to show his appreciation: “Oh Juliet! You have changed… A little…”
- Spider-Man 2: In this production Doctor Octopus is played by two people standing front to back toward the audience while waving their hands in the air like an octopus (sort of imitating Kali).
Spider-man to Doc Oc: “You should go back to the sea and I, spider man protector of justice, will defeat you!”
Oc: “Shut up!” *does the V sign with her fingers*
Then he kills Spider-Man with pesticide and absorbs him into his skin to add more arms and become more powerful. This is perhaps one of my favorite takes on Doc Oc.
- The Ring: Girl starts climbing out of the TV. Then they freak out and turn off the TV and she gets stuck half way out. Then they leave and she’s stuck there, bored and sad.
- Chairman Mao and friends crash land in South America. They go to a brothel. Mao only cost 1.5 rmb but his friends were much more expensive. This made them all nervous because maybe that meant that that particular prostitute was more diseased. Then they got on another plane to try and go to a hospital but the plane crashed again. They decided that to get proper medical care they needed to get to the US.
“I can take you to US”
“Oh okay thank you!”
“But there are only two ways to get there…”
“What are they?”
“You must snip your JJ.”
“What? I don’t want to snip my JJ! What is the other option?”
“You can be dead.”
“Oh, well in that case I will snip my JJ.”
Then Mao snipped his JJ and was able to escape to the safety of the US. Then they concluded the presentation with “This was a true story”.
Your wtf is as good as mine.
- Sleeping Beauty: This was actually a political satire, something pretty much impossible to find in China but that I saw happen twice in this particular class (one of my older classes). Sleeping beauty wakes up thanks to the hard work of the prince going through all sorts of ordeals to get to her. She says upon her awakening: “Thanks to the leadership of the party we have found eachother again, I’m alive!”
They ask me for comments after these presentations and it’s like… what am I supposed to say? Especially for the ones that mention political leaders. What do I say to those last two? Can I even say “good job”? Yeesh.
Moving on, I found out only now at the end that I’ve had this posted in my cubicle the entire year without realizing it:
lol I’m an English teacher.
At one point all the students started moving boxes into the teacher’s offices. The Gao Kao was happening that weekend so they had to clear everything out of the classrooms. Every student has a box and our office was the designated recipient for the freshmen classes:
This is what our office started to look like after only 3 or 4 classes of the 20 that were going to use the space. I kept telling the students “Take whatever you are going to need for the rest of today’s classes and your homework.” And they would go: “Okay.” Then they’d leave for awhile and comeback looking lost and confused and trying to find their boxes at the bottom of some stack because they forgot something.
I specifically remember one student where she came in and her box was at the bottom, so I moved everything (which has to be done carefully because the boxes are stacked so high and they’re so heavy they break the boxes underneath them). Then I said: “Okay, do you have everything you’re going to need for class?”
“Yes.”
“For today’s classes, tomorrow’s classes, and for your homework over the weekend?”
“No.”
“Well grab whatever you’ll need for that.”
“But that’s later, I don’t need those things yet.”
“Well by the time tomorrow comes this place will be filled with boxes and you will not be able to get to your box again.”
“But I don’t need it yet.”
“I know you don’t need it yet, grab it now so you won’t have to come back later when you won’t be able to reach your box. It was hard enough to get to it now.”
“Okay. I guess that makes sense” and she grabbed a couple more items.
“Do you have everything? Including things for your homework this weekend?”
“No.”
“Well you won’t be able to take the box home so you should grab your homework now as well.”
“Okay. I don’t know where my pencils are though.”
“Then you’re going to have to borrow one from a friend.”
“Okay.”
This is the gesture I was making in my head: \o_O/
The whole thing was exacerbated by the fact that someone somewhere said “The boxes can only be in the front of the office.” Which, frankly, if I had understood that sooner I would have just said “fuck ‘em” and guided the students to the back of the office. They ended up filling my desk with boxes. Again, this picture is after 3 or 4 classes with about 16 left to go:
This was the last day in school for the seniors. Once they took the test the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they no longer had to come to school. I happened to walk into the school right as the Senior 1’s put on a big performance for them for good luck and stuff. Also the headmaster was there wishing them luck and saying “Add oil” which is like add oil to the fire to do better. It was like a concert and the whole school attended:
They also cast off some wish balloons. The first one didn’t work and got stuck under a bridge but the other ones worked:
Empty classrooms always make me feel weird. They have my whole life. Don’t know why. It’s like when there’s a street that ’s empty and you decide to walk down the line in the middle of it. Feels weird:
After the concert people began making trains and running around the school yelling and stuff.
At one point I was walking around and a whole bunch of my students started walking toward the stairwell. I didn’t know what was happening so the class leader (I think he’s the class leader, the guy with the glasses on the right) said: “Mr. Dennis! Come with us! We’re going to make a big Chinese 3 for the seniors!” and I’m like “Aright!”
This is us down in the courtyard making a Chinese 3. A 3 looks like three horizontal lines stacked on top of eachother. One guess as to what 1 and 2 look like.
Have I ever told you about “Aluba”? Aluba is an ancient African tribal game where a bunch of people pick you up and make you air-hump vertical objects. Wait, you’ve never heard of that? It sounds like a completely made up story to justify humiliating your friend and make them air hump something? No no, look it up dude, it’s totally true:
There’s a guy that replaces all the water in the school by carrying these all over the place, two at a time, using a stick on his shoulders:
I don’t know what these cords are for but I liked them:
When I did the punk rock lesson in class I showed my students a picture of a 3 year old with a Mohawk. I said “Do people in China ever do this?” and they said: “NOOOOooo, of course not!!!”
I saw it again last week but I didn’t get a picture.
Speaking of haircuts here’s Helen after I got mine:
We went out to dinner and Charlotte (Helen’s daughter) brought a really difficult ball and cup that had 4 different solutions. Bigger cup, medium sized cup, beveled out hole the size of my pinky nail, or catching it on a peg using a hole drilled in the ball. That’s right, I’m including a section of my blog to talk about ball and cup. What of?
We had wine in a manner that would make my family proud:
Oh yeah, also blood soup. In case you were curious it’s not like blood poured in water. What they do is the take the blood and fry it. Apparently when you cook blood like that it congeal into being exactly like red tofu. It’s the exact same texture and shape as tofu. It’s bizarre and creepy mostly because I mean it’s not like a thin layer of blood, it’s like 2 inch cubes of blood. There was a pretty deep pan filled with a lot of blood somewhere in the back kitchen.
I like this sign (Look I got these vitamin pills see? They cure everything. They’re beneficial I tell ya, you need these. Like nothin’ you’ve ever had before. Cureall, a life saver, they’re good for I tell ya.):
but I especially love this sign outside the police station:
It’s more fun because the rest of the sign the spelled fire correctly. Freudian slip?
After the dinner we went to May’s house where I found out that dishwashers are different in China. They don’t use water. This makes sense because the water isn’t actually clean so using it doesn’t exactly work. What they do is they heat the dishes up to 400 degrees in this thing. This explains to me why they have so many more clay and metal dishes in the store versus various microwave safe plastic compounds like back home:
Here’s some fruit that tasted like blackberries:
The elevator in May’s building had this picture in it. It made me laugh. I can’t think of many ads in the world that feature bare feet so prominently:
Science Teacher + Gym Teacher
So one day I awoke to what sounded like a whole lot of yelling. I couldn’t get back to sleep because people kept going “wooooo!!” and I couldn’t shut it out with a pillow over my head so I grabbed my camera and walked out my door.
I saw someone across from all this commotion that I knew spoke English so I asked him what was going on. He said “It is a marriage.” He explained it was between one of the gym teachers and one of the science teachers. Apparently they were playing some kind of wedding trick on them. They hid the shoes of the bride and they couldn’t leave until they found them.
I don’t know this man’s name. He’s one of the gym teachers. He doesn’t speak English but he is always wearing a smirk and he always looks like he really really wants to talk and joke around with Quentin and me, but our language barriers cause problems. Rumor has it has like 4 girlfriends or something. IIRC he’s also the kung fu teacher. We call him Mr. Badass and this is the only time I’ve ever seen him without sunglass somewhere on his head or a popped collar. While waiting for the groom to find the shoes most of the men went outside to smoke:
They found her shoes! Yay! Now they can go to the party!
Video of the groom carrying the bride out of her apartment…
… and then down 5 flights of stairs:
Aftermath of her apartment:
I went up to my room to see where they were going and I found I had the perfect vantage point to see them hop into all their matching wedding cars and drive to lunch:
Obviously I’m not the only one interested in watching:
After this I went to the Shanghai Expo so look forward to a post featuring the most people I’ve ever seen in my life. Crazy, crazy,
Also I’m currently in Hong Kong which means I was finally able to pick up a legitimate copy of the Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach. Love it so far. First CD I’ve bought in like a year and a half. Physical media is such a cute novelty. The Gorillaz album reminds me of what I’m doing right now art-wise. I’m making a concept band, still in the early stages of working on it. Here’s a link to The Guitar, it recently got put in DA’s prints of the week list which is pretty cool:
Keep checking back! I’ll be home soon and I’m currently a month behind or so and blog updates about China will still happen even when I’ve returned.
Bye!
