The chicken god

I have to pack now, and try not to forget anything important. T-shirt, check. Shorts, check. Camera, check. Smile, check. Seems like I have everything!

A few plane rides later I am a little south of Beijing, in a freezing dust-bowl called Jinan. The city is the capital of the province of Shandong and the population could be anywhere between 4 and 6+ million people. The welcome hoo-ha includes a banquet with the big-wigs. Great food is a great way to interrupt great work.

The accommodation we are in is part of the old campus and it’s prime real estate. Hence the reason the university has sold it off and isn’t really interested in maintaining anything. The short version of the list includes several electrical power problems. On the plus side, we have some internet access and no-one has died yet of electrocution from the wiring and water mix!

So anyway, we go to work at the new campus. It’s a half hour bus ride that costs Y2 and one cannot get change, we must have the exact amount. Fine apart from the fact that everyone hoards their Y1 coins and notes. Roads in China are, as you might expect. There’s a brave driver or two out there.

Fast forward to the classroom and one discovers amazing and horrifying truths. My first shock was blackboards and chalk, I’m getting used to it though. I haven’t seen a garbage bin in any classroom yet, so often the floor is covered in crap that cleaners should have cleared away months ago. A bit of rubbish here and there – big deal. Add a couple of cigarette butts and a nice green golly spit, you’re starting to get the idea…

Somehow our wonderful classrooms have lighting, yet the power-points (to plug in the CD player for students’ authentic listening practices) are simply not powered! Why?

I browsed page 2 of 21st Century, China Daily, Wednesday 14th of March 2007 edition where there’s an article titled Looming university financial crisis.

There are no figures yet on the combined debt of the country’s universities, but some National People’s Congress deputies say universities in Shandong and Jiangsu provinces have debts of more than 10 billion yuan. There have been calls for government action.

The students themselves are lovely, of course. In their late teens and early twenties, they seem to put up with more than a fair deal of shit. Our first week diagnostic revealed yet again the phenomenon of, on average, boys pathetically weaker in their essay writing than the girls. A few of the students’ great statements from last semester.

• The powder of life.
• The chicken god.
• I’m a standard virgin.

Our challenge : trying to undo the learning style pressed upon the poor students for years from their other backward teachings. It’s in many ways a quantity versus quality issue: If I hand in 60 pathetic essays, will that get me a career? Or do I need to write one good essay? It certainly is interesting to be working against the tide.

Will I become ruthless? Corrupt? Bribed? Who knows… I’ll finish the contract, but I won’t be back here in a hurry. The good news is we got paid yesterday, in cash. It’s a little awkward to manage the stack when the highest denomination is Y100, and there’s no shoe box to shove it under the bed. I’ve survived week 1, only 11 to go.