Changing Worlds

Could it be I was really returning to the faraway world of my origins? I'd now lived at the Shooting Hotel for so long -- since the beginning of time, when the semester started in September -- that the reality of my departure only sank in, for me and others, as my final moments approached. Students came for goodbyes; I was given cards, gifts, photos; I went to pay my respects to Mr. Li, who'll be retiring after one more semester. It was perhaps a tough break to have to experience a Westerner like me just before the end of his career, but he'd borne it with reasonably good grace. I gave him a bottle of wine -- he had a bottle to give to me too -- and we said goodbye with a hearty handshake.

Mr. Meng took me for a pleasant lunch and paid me my final salary installment. The currency thing was completely taken care of -- I ended up with U.S. dollars. Everything on that score was satisfactory.

But amidst the last-minute things, time was beginning to press. As three students and I were tripping over each other in my small room on the eve of my departure, chaotically stuffing my things into suitcases, a part-time colleague with murky "consulting" interests in Beijing knocked on my door at 10:30 PM and pressed his cellphone upon me, imploring me to talk to a couple of teacher recruiters, since he'd promised them I would.

Jim Wu also had a matter to discuss with me, earlier that night. He asked me to his room and closed the door behind me, looking a bit nervous. The final grades I'd submitted only showed an asterisk next to Toffee's name. What was to be her grade for the course, he wanted to know.

I had frankly thought the whole Toffee issue was dead and buried at this point. But the corpse, it seemed, was still twitching.

"Uh, Jim, she's one of the cheaters, she gets a zero. You caught her yourself."

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's my mistake. I forgot to tell you. The paper she threw was actually just a piece of wastepaper."

I contemplated his face. As on other occasions, he had specks around his mouth from the spiced sunflower seeds he likes to snack on.

He elaborated: "We did a big room cleanup after the exam and I found the paper. It was just a little piece of wastepaper. I'm sorry, I should have told you sooner. My mistake. I forgot."

The exam had taken place five days before this discussion. And when we'd talked just two days before this, I'd referred to Toffee's cheating and he'd said nothing.

"How did you recognize that the piece of paper you found was the same you saw her throw?" I asked, wondering if there was any limit to the absurdities that could be maintained with a straight face.

He simply reiterated how he was at fault for not telling me of his discovery sooner, as if confessions of fictitious culpability were a fair price to pay for my suspension of disbelief.

"Jim, you are lying," I told him.

He denied it, with an unhappy smile.

Why was he trying to help Toffee? I don't know. It was particularly curious since he was the one who'd spotted her cheating in the first place. But he'd probably only revealed it at the time because he figured I'd also seen it.

Anyway, he didn't get a grade for Toffee from me.

After my return to Toronto, I received an email message he'd sent late that night, after our talk:

During the Pre-ICB exam, I "caught" Toffee cheat for she threw sth on the floor, at that time I made up my mind to give her zero, cause I thought she cheated, after that I learned from the students and her that the paper she threw was just a waste paper, so I thought maybe it was not fair to give her zero for this.

I just forgot to tell you this immediately, cause these days too many things that need me to do.

I replied:

The students know she was cheating (on my exam and on others). Why don't you think about what you're doing? When the school admin protects cheaters, this can only worsen the morale and increase the cynicism of the students. Is this good for ICB? For China?

I haven't heard back.

An article in the Jan. 5 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Chinese Applicants to U.S. Universities Often Resort to Shortcuts or Dishonesty" (online at http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i17/17a05201.htm), quotes Columbia University's dean of graduate admissions as saying that they see more cheating on applications from students from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan than elsewhere. The article tells how students in China buy ghost-written applications, pay "gunners" to write English tests in their name, or even show up at a university with fake letters of admission and try to register.

I doubt this indicates something anomalous about the character of young people in China. (The article also mentions that the 55,000 Chinese who now study in the United States "are generally viewed as being hard-working, high-achieving students.") More likely, it reflects some perverse lessons being taught at Chinese educational institutions.