A Confrontation

A leisurely visit to the Beijing zoo Sunday with a couple of my students. The pandas, which had kind of been the point, were comatose -- made me think of the Monty Python dead parrot skit, which I must do one of these days with the students -- but the bears and tigers were nice, and the cohort of twenty or so monkeys was lively and amusing.

In contrast to the strict controls at Western zoos, the rule here (as on the roads) is no rules. Visitors freely throw food to the animals, who disdain or favor the offerings according to inclination and temperament.

For at least one zoo patron, the animals were less interesting than yours truly. Of staring, my wonderful Let's Go China guidebook notes: "If you went to China wearing an extra head, you couldn't attract any more attention than you will merely by virtue of being a foreigner." Ever the indispensable traveller's companion, the book supplements this with some judicious advice: "Yelling at them to stop staring will most likely just make the problem worse."

Have I at times suggested I find the Chinese mindset unfamiliar? It can be more than reciprocal. To some folks here, I am as fascinatingly unfathomable as those glowering pumas. As I watched zoo patrons lean towards the beasts and shout "Hello!" -- their one English word -- to produce a reaction (the question occurs: Why English?), it echoed the identical "Hello!" that's occasionally thrown at me as I stride along Beijing streets -- typically by a gaggle of loitering men curious to learn anything from my sudden apparition. If they can elicit a response of any kind, they will have built upon their knowledge. I sometimes wheel around, flash a brilliant smile, and respond with a hearty "Hi!" before continuing on my way. (Educating mankind is a responsibility I don't like to shirk.) This invariably produces much mirth.

Speaking of the cultural gulf, I've several times reflected on the observation of Leo Ou-fan Lee, a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University, quoted in an October 13 New York Times story on Gao Xingjian, the Chinese-born novelist and playwright who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the article, Gao writes as fluently in French as in Chinese. This is "very unusual," says Lee, "because most contemporary Chinese writers simply are not capable of writing in two languages. He's probably China's first bilingual writer."

A student who arrived at this college with better English proficiency than the others has taken a dislike to me and has exhibited a rather nasty hostility. Although I should no doubt be bigger about it all, I have as a result taken a dislike to her. I did make an attempt to discuss the problem with her, but she walked away.

She was irritating me in class on Friday by repeatedly popping out with the answers to questions I was directing to other students. She was also talking to her friends sitting near her while I was trying to teach. At one point I asked her, during the class, whether I was the teacher or she was. She answered defiantly to the effect that my teaching should be less lecture-format and more interactive. Since I obviously didn't want to argue with her in open class, I told her I wanted to speak to her privately afterwards. She refused! I told her: either speak to me after class, or don't come back for the next class. She retorted that she'd paid her tuition and was entitled to come back.

Lippy or what?

Folks, this is not normal here. Actually, this is unprecedented. I've had a few sullen students who are unhappy with me, but no one has defied me like this.

Some of you who know me a little bit may already be smiling. I don't look for fights, but I don't have a history of shrinking from them either. The secret is, I kind of enjoy the stimulation. But my fights have generally been with people who are bigger, more powerful, and considerably more wealthy and resourceful than me. What I have here is a person who, #1, is an 18-year-old girl; #2, is in the position of student, while I'm the teacher; and #3, is quite a bit more dispensable to the college than I am.

I mean, the girl is toast.

Or so I thought.

The next class, she did indeed show up, as expected. A test was scheduled for that day.

"Good morning, everyone," I said. "Toffee, please leave the room."

She outrightly refused to obey. I made the class a promise: there was no way the class would proceed that day with her in the room. Paying the tuition is not enough, I told them. You also have to follow the rules of the classroom.

She wouldn't leave.

"I wanted to resolve this with you privately," I told her, still in front of the class. "You refused. You've chosen to start a fight with me in front of the whole class. Toffee, do you think I'm going to let you win?"

"I am not starting a fight. You want a fight," she said. How untrue.

Then I got a bit craftier: "You seem to think you're some kind of student leader, fighting for democracy in the classroom. But I'm not the Communist Party. I'm a teacher -- trying to teach English to your classmates."

Unfortunately I think this last bit was lost on just about everyone. I said it fairly deliberately, but it's not enough. With their level of English, even this is something I'd have to explain on the board for five minutes before they'd understand it.

After a while it was clear no forward movement would be occurring. I wrote "class cancelled" on the board and went up to my room to work on my computer. (With all these tests I've got a lot of numbers to handle. I'm trying to figure out, despite the lousy documentation, how to use SQL with IBM's version of Java. Any suggestions?) As I was climbing the stairs I noticed her following, one flight behind. The exercise concluded, she was going to her room as well.

This is the "A" group of students. On Mondays I ordinarily teach B A B A, 1.5 hours each. I'd administered the test to the B's already that morning. In the afternoon, in my second meeting with the B's, we discussed the correct answers. Then it was time for the A's again. Can you believe the exact same scene from the morning was re-enacted? The A's ended up losing two lectures, a total of 3 hours.

By the way, I had foreseen the possibility of these events on Friday and had discussed it with an English-speaking Chinese staffer here who I've been told is my "assistant." I wanted him to be accessible Monday morning in case this situation arose, so he could get the girl out and let the class proceed. But for whatever reason, he advised earlier on Monday morning that he had to go to the other campus.

What comes next is a tale of intrigue and absurdity which has not as of this point yet reached its climax. For some it will forever extinguish any remaining doubts about my foolishness and obduracy. I plan to document the tale faithfully in a future installment for its possible interest as cultural reportage, though this may necessitate a level of detail that makes the reading less scintillating than some would prefer.