Week 13: Still Living

I have reached the thirteenth week of the semester, and am still managing to get by, though I have been really busy with a flurry of testing taking place over the past few weeks. Most of the testing that occurred I was administering, but I partook in (yet another)standardized test this weekend too... great fun.

Every year in China it's around Thanksgiving time that my mind becomes a haze as thoughts of family, friends, turkey, pumpkin pie, clean air, and beating random students and street vendors unconscious swirl painfully through my brain. The air quality gets particularly bad this time of year as full scale coal burning starts taking place in order to heat our apartments (and by heat I mean keep my apartment above freezing. I still wear a sweat shirt in the apartment). The mood of everyone in general becomes a bit less cheerful this time of year, thanks to the weather, and actually this is sort of a good thing for me, as I will explain later this weekend in an entry, but for classroom atmosphere it is a killer. And it is in these dull, depressing times each year that I usually have to give my mid-term exams.

I should preface a discussion of my midterms with a bit of a background on the psychological death grip examinations have on the Chinese students. The education system in China is completely based around tests. We might say that all education systems are that way, but in the American education system we at least have a few varied ways of evaluating students. In China there are only EXAMS, and they should be written in caps because there are really no such things as quizzes or small tests, there are only big EXAMS that have important consequences for the students. There are a series of national standardized tests that all the students have to take at various stages in their academic careers in order to continue to move on to the next "phase." My students are always so curious as to how the United States law could be so strict as to force their students to continue studying in school until they are 16 years old. In China there are many students who don't get a formal education at all, and by the time the students are 13 or 14 they already must pass a standardized test in order to determine if they will be able to get a high school education or not. After entering into High school they begin almost immediate to prepare for their next date with destiny: The College Entrance Examination.

The schedule for high school students in China is rigorous to say the least and the students face pressure from their family and their school that leaves lasting scars. The College Entrance Examination can determine an awful lot about the future of each student, since it is from this score alone that both the University and the major for each student is determined. Once safely in the confines of the University the testing continues. Each major has their own series standardized tests that students from every school all over the nation must pass in order to receive their diploma, and by the time most of the students are juniors they begin their 2 year preparations to take the next big EXAM： The Graduate School Entrance Examination(or as everyone likes to call it here for some reason, the Post- Graduate Exam).

All of these national exams go along with the usual exams that are given in each individual class each semester. But in China most of the time there are only one or two exams given each semester, and it is from those exams that their entire semesters grade is determined, once again making the stakes higher for each exam. There are generally two main ways for testing Chinese students: Written exams and Oral Exams (Holla!). The written exams will usually be multiple choice or fill in the blank exams(this is college level exams we are talking about), while the oral exams will usually just be the reciting of paragraphs. It is this sort of academic atmosphere that sucks the creative energy and vital spirit out of most of my students and turns them on test day in mindless test fearing zombies.

My exams were Oral, of course, and it was awesome. I just wanted the students to get in front of the group in order to give a short speech(minute and a half about something or someone who has had a great influence over their life) in order to give them public speaking experience and in order to allow me to see each one individually. I watched 350 students give speeches and my mind was numb after about 30. Everyone memorized what their speech, and most spoke it in such a monotone voice that it was sometimes difficult to discern who was who. This problem was accentuated by the fact that a few of them had memorized passages out of a magazine rather than actually say something about their own life, and apparently there are only like 6 English magazines on campus, because people were using the same ones. The students were all so nervous, angry, and nervously angry throughout the week that it was uncomfortable. I felt as though I was torturing them or betraying them by making them speak for a minute and a half. I even had the treat of four students completely losing their composure and breaking into tears in front of the group, two of which collected themselves and managed to finish, one of which quietly stepped down off the stage instead of finishing , and one trooper who completely broke down in to hysterical sobbing yet still tried to finish, until I finally gently interrupted her incoherent sobs and told her she did a good job and could relax. It is a real awkward situation to try and deal with a crying student in class, but something that I have become familiar with. Your instinct is to go up to them and try to help them, but then all the attention of the entire class is on them and they became self-conscious and more embarrassed. I have found that just leaving the student alone to compose themselves with friends works the best, and it seems from the reaction of the students that this is the most common method of most teachers here.

What makes everything so difficult for these exams is the fact that in general everyone around here seems to be terrified of making mistakes. Most of the Chinese teachers tend to make their grades based on grammatical errors and pronunciation errors(that they can hear) alone, (which I find funny because of the amazing amount of grammatical errors the teachers themselves make when speaking and writing) this makes things more dificult but there is also a deeper rooted fear of errors that seems to be a general cultural trend. It makes it a stifling atmosphere to try and learn a language in. My students and I both struggle in it, as I try to learn Chinese people will often not want to hear me speak Chinese because they don't want to hear me make mistakes, even if they can understand what I am saying. There is a history of showing respect for leaders by covering up the errors that they make and trying to display them as infallible. I remember reading (or maybe somebody told me the story, I can't remember anymore) a story once when visiting the summer palace. An Emporer went to a lake in the palace to learn to fish. He had never fished before, so had no skill, but the ministers sent a troop of servants to the lake and had them all stay hidden underneath the water. They used reeds for breathing and were all holding fish. When the Emperor would throw his line into the water, a servant would plant a fish on his cord and he would easily haul it in. As the day went on the emperor was hailed as a genius in fishing without learning how to do a thing. The intentions were good, the ministers did not want the Emperor to feel unskilled, and didn't want to allow others to see the Emperor in an "ugly moment," yet no learning could occur. I don't know if this story is really true or not, but I think that it says a lot about some of the attitudes towards mistakes and failure here that make it difficult to teach.

On the brighter side I was treated to some gems of quotes by students. One from a girl who was talking about what a deep influence Chairman Mao had had over her life, commenting that, "He has such great handwriting." Another came from a girl who said, "Because of our situation my parents were forced to work out for a living." In her defense, though, she was in great shape, I don't think this was a mistake. I was also amazed (once again)by the willingness of the students to talk about such incredibly personal events, the most graphic of which came from one little girl who was commenting on the death of her Uncle in an automobile accident, saying that upon arriving at the scene of the accident, "We could find no trace of my uncle, not even one finger."

It was a long week, capped off by another trip to Jinan for another exam. Too many exams make me John want to down a pint of whiskey and punch a hole through a window, so I am glad to be done with all of that nonsense and back in the friendly confines of the Zhuang. On my trip to Jinan I tried once again to take a train, and confirmed yet again that I am a huge idiot, and taking the train is always a bad idea. All of the seated positions were sold out, and so I was left standing on the train. It is pretty unreal, there are so many people everyday travelling on the train that there is no where near enough seats for all of the passengers. You are left standing in an incredibly narrow aisle, and constantly dancing around as people continue to walk back and forth up and down the aisle. Everyone is so accustomed to the crowded situation that they don't think twice about getting up and walking by you 3 or 4 times in 10 minutes just to see how their buddy's card game is going. This uncomfortable atmosphere(I won't get into the smell) is only made more pleasant by the large numbers of people looking at me, poking their friends, pointing at me and laughing, whispering "hello" to their friends trying to encourage them to say something to me I might understand, and then talking about foreigners to their friends showing their "expertise" on all things western culture. I think it is for situations like this that throwing stars were originally developed, but unfortunately I didn't have any handy on me at the time.

I did manage to pull out a few positives from the trip to Jinan: a large stuffed crust pizza courtesy of my girl on the side, Pizza Hut, a huge box of hot chocolate for the lonely winter nights, and a jar of half peanut butter-half chocolate that I have almost entirely consumed over the past day and a half. In fact I think I will go for another spoonful right now.


Hopefully this next week will be a little more exciting, bringing a little more entertainment back into my life and the blog, now that we are passed the droll days of examinations it can only be up from here, right?