Think-Israel

THINK-ISRAEL

CHINA DIARY: Friends And Students at Wuchan University

by Marion D.S. Dreyfus

Computer deleted big note. Nothing left of 2 hours' work. Last week's piece on synagogues was also deleted.. Frustrating. Ironically, wrote three poems this very week, a sign, says Bob, of my emergence into the Wuhan lifestream. (My words.)

If I can get them in sufficient number, perhaps a slim book of chinese-inspired verse. not all are exactly laudatory, of course.

Di and I remodeled the format of the Eng. Corner this week, to smashing success. We hated the prior format, requiring us to stand for 2 hours in front of the lovely but noisy fountain midcampus, and answer shot out questions from 30 to 80 students hemming us in on all sides.

My success can be measured by the votes of students this week: If we are not popular, we can apparently be let go. One Chinese teacher was, last semester. Too strict. I am a bona fide Ms. Congeniality here, though.

We sat in an auditorium and are hoarse and shaking by the end of the session of attack by well-meaning but over eager students desperate for conversation with us. Our askers were some 150 kids who never repeated their questions, everyone heard, all got a chance to ask, and di and I managed some humor and great strings of discussion.

I for some reason lay on rather thickly my praise for China, Chinese culture and the students themselves. Those attending are not my students, of course, but freshmen or third year students not benefitting from our advent in the sophomore ranks. We were asked numerous daffy questions, many about whom we admired in the world of sports, and they asked me to sing a song and dance, of which I chose to comply with only the former. They applauded our entrance and leave, as if we were stars. I defended George Bush, and also plugged the US at any and all instances. I see the two nations as experiencing a long-withheld thaw after the black years of the red book chairman.

I am puzzled by his picture on the currency, and by statuary of him everywhere in the office lobbies or admin. blgs. He has been superceded by a much more enlightened regime. Yet he persists. I find myself unwilling to say his name in class, afraid to rouse the dusty but potent ghosts...?

On my salary I cannot purchase anything like a printer for the laptops that don't work. Not to mention the fact that nothing is available in Wuhan in any case. Bill is shipping his broken computer back to the US for repairs. Since they deducted several thou from my yuan tree this pay period, and the noisome department assistant impertinently suggested i could live very well on what was left, I had to agree: Certainly--If I do not buy anything at all, I can live well. We laugh at her for her chutzpah and ineptitude with us, where her siesta time is more critical to her daily chores than is translating or performing needed liaison tasks.

Sad to say, though it is sukkot now, there are hundreds of miles separating me from the proximity of others celebrating the holiday. I asked our dinner companions tonight, "Jack" and "Brandi" - all English names are of recent vintage of course - if there were a Jew within earshot or car ride. No. You-tai is the word for Jew, but it is a webby name, all hung with cobweb and near forgotten.

The rabbi of Shanghai, however, kindly offered to have us at his home when we get to Shanghai for the curriculum conference, end of the month. There are so many intriguing villages to see and visit, however, we are trying to figure out how to get to them. My idea is to board a train and get off in three hours. Wherever we stop will be alien and interesting terrain, cheaper than Wuhan, and an adventure in discovery.

The winter vacation presents a problem because if one is to go anywhere, it must be south, or the northerly climes are too frozen. I want to go to Mongolia anyway, wearing cozy stuff, bec. when else can we go? It would not be a snap, because it is quite frozen then.

One of the fellows i met in Beijing came here to see me, only forgetting to inform me first, so that I could be here when he got here. As our electricity was kaput today, no phone, no TV, no lights, no A/C, no automatic doors. No fridge. So people can call all they like - there will be no answer. And here I was so gleeful that since my return from Beijing both the water and electric worked! Premature celebrations.

Found it amazing that Schwarzenegger won. It seems so unbelievable, but stranger things have transpired.

I did buy some new clothing in Beijing, bargaining madly. I have been happily reversing and inside-outing them, to provide twice as many as it appeared i bought.

Tuesday, government officials are coming here to inspect our living quarters. Oddly, though, we are supposed to go with them afterwards to dine. I am uneasy about this news, just in, and wonder the purpose of their inspection. Is it safety and environment - or something less transparent? (My escutcheon: Paranoia rampant on a field of grass.)

Our supper companions thought it not remarkable that government people come to look. What if they dislike my choice of artefacts? What if the color scheme offends?

It being 3:15 am, and the van scheduled for 9 am to shlep us to pick up cleaning and necessaries, I will bid you a good morrow and hope the rain outside has stopped as I walk home or get my bike and cycle.

If you notice any Chinese activity, from TV audience participation to Olympic events, the entire audience wears the same outfit; I knew that. I am delighted that they made me a suit, though the fit is less than Pamela Anderson-ish. They made the breast part monolithic, not tailoring it to the fact that where the breasts are, there will need to be cloth to cover. Where they are not, the same material can - voila! - go back in to a smaller size. The result is much like the clothes I had tailored in Hong Kong some time ago. I have not yet tried on the pants or skirt, but am sure the same principle will obtain: Less sexy, more utilitarian.

We both bought three fish, not exactly goldfish, but rare things that are lovely to behold, one black with exophthalmic (bulgy, for the Merriam-Webster-challenged) eyes, one white with a crimson throat and belly, and one in gold/bronze, a filigreed black tail and a negligee-like look. We bought the biggest bowls the woman had, and walked the bowls and the fish and water back home in two (leaking~ it turns out) bags. So the fish would not suffer new water shock, which I warned Di about.

We got home and the water had almost leaked away, so the fish were fighting for their lives. We biked back, immediately, not putting on warmer clothing, tho the temperature has plunged and it is really chilly enough to make me welcome the heat putt-putting out of our walls, as of the beginning of the cold season. We got more water, in three bags I had tested at home, and I bought a suddenly appearing larger bowl - the children need their space.

But the vendor was afraid I'd keep the other bowl, and so we had a long intervention using Brandi, one of my students and now uncomfortably a part of our daily crowd when we run around town, go clubbing (we went to the terrific Blue Sky last night, though well over an hour away by cab in the rain, a taste of the Upper West Side: tablecloths, great food, music from the real world, nice WCs, ex-pats, foreigners, [rich] locals, and even FREE Internet access instantaneously - wideband, no less) or need anything fixed or interceded for. We raced home to exchange the bowl, put the fish in more water, and bring the unwanted bowl back.

Before we left, we heard sweet female voices singing "Happy Birthday," wafting out of a nearby 'keyhole' Chinese entryway veranda. Five girls crowded out and asked us in to celebrate the birthday of Ellen (former name; Allen, until we told her it was a boy's name. I also dubbed one girl, Chah-something or other, 'Charlene,' and another, with Chinese name Loo Si, 'Lucy') in their tiny apartment for 6. Dee, Jane, Charlene, Ellen, Lucy and another girl I called Charlie, all around a table no bigger than a minute. Their living room was smaller than my loo.

Their lovely decorated cake was hand-delivered by 'Ellen's' aunt, a professor of English at Wuhan University. They had Pringles and biscuits, and Orange Squash. We shared a slice of cake. This experience taught me that, no matter where you are in the world, birthday cake never tastes very good, tho it looks fabulous.

We were utterly charmed by them all, struggling in English, and they seemed happy to host us. I calligraphed "Happy birthday, Ellen" for her, and she said it was the best birthday present she had ever gotten. Charlene said she would 'love her new name forever.' We felt highly honored by their delight.

When we got back to the fish lady, tho, she had gone for the night. This is sad and not good. I charaded coming back after I sleep, and the fruit vendors and others smiled widely but did not get it, I fear.

Roger and Otessa, both of whom start teaching tomorrow, have zero experience between them, and they get the same salary as Bill and Jim, and I admit I am disconsolate at the injustice of the pay schedule here, which I will make known - once again - to the dept. head, who seems not to disagree with me that they are hardly qualified. Poor Dr. Chen has to mediate between a somewhat imperious Diane and my own negation of what they demand, to the pokey and untroubled fecklessness of Bill and Jim, who by their lack of complaints tell the local staff that what we need/want/must have is petty or ignorable. We are insisting on medical insurance, tho, which is critical. We are brought here under the understanding of medical coverage, and it is no never mind what local profs have or do not have. If anything does happen to us, sans insurance, we will be so much coffee stain.

Again, if one lives as a local, on the salary gotten, one can do well enough. The moment you step into Blue Sky places or a real restaurant or try to move a foot beyond this hinterland outpost, one is plunged into major expenses.

But the inspectors coming this week are apparently a big deal. Someone (my suspect: Allen the translator, the overburdened) forgot to tell these gov't. guys to come within the mandated 30-day period. The school is being fined Y500 per person - Y3,000 for the 6 of us. The school is therefore taking the inspectors out to supper, all of us attending, for far more than the amount owed, I understand. This is to expunge the black mark, and to save face.

I am looking forward to this process, tho I do not know what kind of 'inspection' our places will undergo, and my enthusiasm for such military folderol is extremely underevident. My place is not bad-looking, since I have deployed the purchases gotten in Beijing. We have been given permission to 'borrow' some of the magnoilias and marigolds and pink or red flowers in pots that be-ring and adorn our marble courtyard, below. So we have 6 or so potted glories on the floors or sills, adding a zesty and colorful live note to our hangings, fans, mats, throw pillows, tonkas and new, finny 'children.'

I wrote another poem today, a dark brood on the nature of what it means when someone stands chopsticks straight up in the middle of a bowl of rice. Death. The chopsticks indicate finito, no person to eat from the bowl. I wrote it while dining on too-hot chilis in a bowl of odd stuff I decided to accept after a fleet of serving people and diners gaily followed me around and shanghai'ed me to one pay station or another.

What I thought was chicken turned out to be cooked celery. What I thought was potato was cabbage. What I thought would be mild as talc was spicy as heck. All told, tho amusing to the habitues, not a sterling luncheon arrangement for moi. It reminded me how I miss my mother and sister. How I miss my friends. Ice cream. Candy bars. Delis. How I miss going out and buying a chicken salad sandwich, a favorite of my Dorchester companion Jack. I am mindful that it is the holiday of sukkot, and I have no etrog or lulav or sukkah to repair to.

Still, when I look at the alternative, we have a nicer set-up than our friends in the Polytechnic, next door to our campus. If I had a better salary and a [male] friend, I would be in the pink. We saw a pig today at the pig farm. Brandi says we can ask permission to pick and eat the strawberries in the strawberry patches we pass. We are looking forward to that.

Di went all over today to try to find us anything to read, and they had nothing except Chinese-English textbooks or the Classics. Nothing contemporary at all. She is going berserk, re-reading the local four-page paper and kicking up fusses with newbies. I'm very busy marking papers and grading essays and such, and reading even an hour a day is a huge luxury. I will be refining my homework-collection technique, though, as I spend 5 hours a day grading and correcting. I am excited by the handouts I prepared this weekend, though I don't know if the classes will be as pleased by my eclecticism as I am. Brandi is thrilled, as she is a Shakespeare buff, and thus likes my introduction of the finer poets and writers into the curriculum of stodgy-tiresome.

Sitting in my office, heater on, but sad. A friend died last week, much older, but a brilliant man, and I never knew until today. Massive heart attack, then three years of incapacity. David Bar Ilan was the former editor of the Jerusalem Post. Such a brilliant and wonderful man. I never knew he was in his late 60s. He died at 73, but seemed like a man 20 or 30 years younger.

We supposedly have electricity - lights, etc. I have a microwave, unhooked up. I have a fridge. My apt. is two large, lovely bright rooms, tho cold as hell. The bathroom is nice too, marble floors, tho the lights are not as bright as they should be for me to read in the bathtub and so on. Putting on makeup is a bit of a joke.

The fridge squats in my living room, but I have cleverly camouflaged it so it doesn't offend quite so much. With the use of flowers and this and that, the apartment looks fairly nice. I am searching for a carpet to make it homier and cozier. I will eventually find it. I will not buy one here because the selection is embarrassingly limited. Hardly anyone, it appears, buys carpeting or area rugs. The choice is: cheap and ugly, or extremely expensive and not-so-hot. I will wait until I get to a more ethnic city or village and find a nice oval handmade rug. I hope.

A student wrote a sweet essay/diary entry that praised me, although she mentioned that I am strict. If there were no boys in my classes, I could be more relaxed. So many of the male students are - sorry to say - goof-offs. Or their English skills are limited in the extreme, despite a putative 7 or 8 years of the language. My all-girl classes are great. My English majors are also pretty terrific. They are such interesting people, and I find them so adorable and winsome that I can feel cavities starting!

One of the funnier things we do is give people without English names a nomenclatural shift: I give people names depending on their looks and character and personality. So yesterday, I saw a lovely guy who pinch-hits for the photocopy girl, and I felt: Evan. So i spelled it for him. He liked it. His girlfriend, a sweet and lovely girl of 22 or so, often photocopies for me, and wears great shoes and outfits. She speaks not a syllable of English, but I named her Annette. Other friends of mine are celebrated with names in all the activities I do, and even when I am gently accosted in the dining rooms - people unhappy with names they got in high school or middle school. I become, in a way, their spirit Mother, after naming them. They keep these names throughout school and later work. Kind of a big responsibility!

Because the school is disgustingly skinny, we are hampered insofar as copying goes (my huge group of 250 students, i cannot do much, though they don't cavil for one or two.) This week, I am teaching a unit on Wm Wordsworth, and i actually had to freehand draw him, bec i did not want the hassle of making an enlarged photo of the thumbnail pic I have of him. Luckily, I can draw, and the kids were impressed at the handiwork. I bring in real microphones for the exercises on Famous people, and they gasp with delight. Props are good. My Hillary Clinton bogus $3 bill went over smashingly.

My mood varies a lot depending on my lack of sleep (bad, severe or startling), and I would welcome a close buddy of course. I think i am making headway in some senses, though I fear the national placement tests in December, which are key to student certification and their futures, really.

Tomorrow I will discuss "Should we let ourselves fall in love while attending university?" on my program. I partner with cute Mike tomorrow night, and he is breezy, quite fetching-looking and easy to get along with. A pack of techies cram into the control booth and the sound studio, and it is always a bit of a riot being buffeted by various hands surging toward the controls and to raise or lower the intro music and various passages between calls and conversation.

One problem with being so far out of the mainstream of this hitherto unknown city is that we are efectively in the countryside, like a white-collar jail. we can get places, but at great effort and expense. It defeats one to try, unless one is fully free a whole day.

I must finish marking papers for tomorrow's 8:25 am class, followed by another, and then a 2-hr. Mandarin lesson, then marking papers, then Conversation Corner, no supper, then run to the studio. Fridays are good, though, with late-pm classes and the possibility of having some outside fun. I may get a massage with Otessa, my colleague. She and i need it. They are expert at reflexology here, deep massage of the feet and calves. I'm invited to a party Sat. night, by the I.T. group, but I don't want to be part of the entertainment, and they tend to rope in the foreigners for the laughs. i have enough performances during the week, when i judge contests all the time, explain poetry to people not familiar with poetry, and teach for umpteen cold hours per week.

There are more fireworks going off. The custom is, whenever anyone finishes his roof, they set off fireworks. There must be a building boomlet here, because fireworks are an almost nightly event.

I keep - cold - jasmine tea in the thermos they gave us (instead of medical coverage or heat in our apartments).

Twice I call a sick colleague, hoping to bring him hot tea or a warm word to lighten his heart. And mine. He is gentle and sleepy, full of phlegm, but needs no me-delivered TLC. He's left off vitaminic sousing. I am not too bad a girl, for all this mad carousing.

My. Twice I try to leave my desk, to see my friends, but the sluggish - stubborn nightly Net refuses to dish up a telling tale. I stay my feet and stand my seat to speak to my back-home life...a thin, long stretch of line stretching cultures far and fine. All this is so arousing.

The wind outside is equal to the chill inside. I finish a week-old page and print it twice. Making sure to mark the copies' number in dark or umber so Their paper can be accounted for. I am not too bad a girl, for all this mad carousing.

My boots from walking in the slushy earth are coated with the color and consistency of young feces. It is my thesis that as the rains came thrice, now my hi-style copper boots must pay the price. All this, so arguably arousing...

My dietary staple, my precious cuppa yogurt maple - 14 to the pack, on special, 10 Y a throw - is as cold at 11:30 as it was 16 hours ago, when taken from my fridge. The temperature upon the bridge inside our little room is not much different from without. Who could not find all this so quite arousing?

My dinner at half-past 11 is six mushrooms sauteed over an open brazier. Three mushrooms each fianceed on two long pongi sticks. Very spicy. Make my mouth dicey. Three times in Putonghua I remind the outdoor cook, No spice! He thinks I speak in jest, Oh yes, and makes me eat his cauldron. One must be quite the girl, for such mad carousing.

The paucity of new thought demonstrated by the "mirror" piece, by one-time acceptable writer Hirsh Goodman was more proof, if ever one needed it, that the right has much to fret about and fume over.

Repeating exhausted and manifestly ludicrous statements that Rabin was about to achieve anything at all from the scorpion Arafat is laughable. Denouncing people who are defending their lives and their territory from the unholy, far too frequent depredations of people who avowedly seek the deaths of one and all Jews/Israelis/non-Arabists in the Arafartian mold, is another sorry rhetorical flourish one can only shake one's head at.

Goodman worries about those who would kill him. Democracy means worrying not about one's own, apparently, but vigorously defending the clearly unacceptable. After the shards of Oslo, the myriad maimings and thousands of dead, all Goodman can bring up is Yigal Amir and the supposed malfeasance of those who object legally to a continued intolerance and intransigence on the part of leftists and media to acknowledge the spade for being a spade? Sad, indeed.

How unhappy for all persons of intelligence and inquiring frames of thought that David Bar-Illan has passed away. Goodman and his mindless ilk, who elide the truth and embarrassingly blame the victim for his pains, would do well going elsewhere, perhaps where weasels and turncoats of pathetic stripe are welcome: France, Germany and Canada.

My computer at work is out again, and our dialup is screwed again, and that means I have little access. Again. I'm in the smoke and fumes of the Internet cafe outside of the school grounds. Paying through the nose. It takes forever to get each msg, and I have to drive through very cold, clammy rain to get home by 11 pm of course, then work all night on grading papers. Last night, I read about 80 papers, then fell asleep, and there were 60 left that I couldn't get to. Tonight, about half that, but I cannot not do these, bec. I am backed up already. I graded about 30 in the afternoon, of course. Intro'ed my Gala Friday night at the poetry club, which was a startling and rather egotistic experience, 40 people listening and commenting on my just-born work.

I have no broadband. They installed the rudiments. No cables, not connected yet, and no ISP. We have no kitchens. No stoves. Only a microwave we have never used.

I may buy a camera soon, bec. they gave me money for all the millions of hours extra I put in every night on clubs and judging and contests and radio and whatnot. I am disappointed and sad that they failed to pay me for my work, and gave all the expats the same amount, when I work at least 6 1/2 hrs more per week than the others do. The admins suddenly forgot how persnickety they were when we were getting our expenses repaid.

I am disgruntled and despairing some of the time, with it coming and going. Di and Brandi shlepped me downtown for sushi today and I was so glad to get out of the white-collar gaol. Di's wire transfer came through, so she can afford a camera, and I will buy one too and maybe the price will drop. I still like my carpet, and my serene apt. would be a marvel to you. No anxiety attacks, really. I am keeping things down to a minimum, both in ofc and home. Usually I fill up an ofc with stuff. Not now.

T'sgiving tomorrow: They are treating us to something supposedly turkey - tho they don't grow native to China. We get to eat from 5-7, then scoot to our regular Thursday schedule. Me to English Corner where I peacock around and entertain the rapt troops, and then I rush to my radio show for an hour of further exhausting chatter and making up stuff. I think my tomorrow's topic should be "The one-child family: Is China creating a monster race of spoiled brats?" There is a vast swell of single kids, all spoiled to the gills, who never have had to compromise or alter their views, whose parents never tell them No, and who have thus little consideration for anyone. This does not say I do not adore the students I have. But they have 'issues,' as they say in the cartoons in the New Yorker. I think my idea is fabulous. Whaddaya think?

From cold and interesting Wuhan, where I went to a village today and intereacted with hundreds (800) of middle school kids and they roared their approval of my visit - I went with Noah, colleague - and they were so astonishingly pure and sweet, and they had never before seen Westerners! I had lost a glove at the start of the day, and the headmaster announced that I had lost a navy glove, so all the school set out to find it. By the end of the day, when I got back to my campus, the bus driver of another school bus on campus quietly handed me my glove, which I had just gotten from the US the other day!

The whole school thronged us for signatures and autographs, and I gave perhaps 200 children English names. It was one of the best things i have done here in 3 months. We ate at a nearby, modest, hotel, but it was fabulous food, with a local flavor we had not encountered--smoky tofu, unusual Ztai Tai, greens, and lovely fish soup and whole fish. The genuineness and delightfulness of our hosts was evocative. I was so delighted with my day, though it was my Sunday and i had tons of work I could not therefore do.

The village was only an hour from wuhan, the streets were not wealthy, but the loveliness was nourishing and ever-reminiscent of the goodness of this people. And the day was warm enough at points to sit outside and drink jasmine tea between classes. Thank Heavens for the Hokey Pokey: Noah and I were expected to perform, really, and without prep, he and I did the HP, and then I did the Eensy Weensy Spider (gteat success) and Three Blind Mice.

And the irony of all: The students kept clamoring for info on Xmas, and insisted i teach them an Xmas song - so I taught them Jingle Bells (!) and it went over well. I told them i was a Youtai (Jew) and that we celebrated Hannukah, and told them we sang and got presents after candle-lighting 8 times, so they Oohed and Aahed and I made a bunch of interesteds for Moses (as opposed to Buddhists for Jesus, etc.)

We are dazzled by the capture. I made it the subject of my lesson plan! One of my fave students, Alice, in class says that 90% of the world hates the US. I demurred. She said it again. I demurred again. Then she said Bush, 90% wants Bush gone (harsher term she used). I was shocked. But most of the classes are hesitanty aware of how bad a man Saddam was. We did an exercise of Bad guys - I call them outlaws. The groups have a dictator in the middle, and the rest of the group seeks to analyze and question them as to why and how they could be so vicious and cruel.

The irony is that the bad men/women are usually the most vocal and potent in English usage and they defend their actions rather frighteningly well. Then they sometimes say 'But I'm not Usama! or Mussolini!'

We are not yet told when our midwinter hols are. We must make plans, but they let us dangle until the last last moment, which will mean we cannot go anywhere - all the tickets will be gone, all hotels or inns full, and we will be forced to stay in this rural burgh...brr.

Meeting Thursday to clarify what in heck is going on. They said I couldn't give finals too soon, we couldn't leave until the 10th of Jan., but now apparently I should be giving them, despite being told not to. My classes are confused re times, as we all are.

Will be using these tiny frail candles stuck in a pot of soil for Chanukah menorah, as there is nothing else to hand. Maybe for the holiday party later this week, given by the blessed Journalism department (way cool people, and very kind) I will sing "Maoz Tsur."

They are all madly keen on Xmas and paraphernalia, tho it is all devoid of religious overtones or meaning. In fact, ironically, "Jingle Bells" is somewhat moronically played over and over all summer, for months, as the street cleaners and water-sprayer trucks all play it incessantly! Other events and vehicles play it often, too. It forms a sort of musical coda and MuZak that is bizarre for being so omnipresent when the sense of what it betokens is entirely absent. A friend here is singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed... " at our holiday do. They have never heard of it, and they asked him for all the words beforehand so they can vet them for troubling content, one assumes.

I have a Father Xmas hat that flashes on and off, Di's gift to me, when you press a button. I let the evil men - Usama, Stalin, YuZeTian (first evil Queen of China), Saddam and company - wear the hat as they are 'interviewed' in class.

Marion D. S. Dreyfus is a journalist, a film critic and an intrepid traveler. She is currently based in Wuchan, China. Her address is: Marion D. S. Dreyfus, Reception centre - 8301, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, English Department, Wuchang Branch, Nanhu, wuchan, Wuhan 430064, P R China.