Darker, Deeper: Uriel in China 2002(see also Uriel in China 2000: Western Teacher, Chinese College)
DEATH THREATS, CONTRACT BREACHES, PETTY LARCENYInside China's Diplomacy Schoolby Uriel Wittenberg
About the AuthorPrior to living in China, Wittenberg, 46, worked as a computer software consultant in major corporations including J.P. Morgan, National Grocers and National Broadcasting Corporation. He has a Bachelor's degree in computer science from University of Toronto, and a Master's in public policy from Carnegie-Mellon University.
ContentsIntroduction1. Darker, Deeper: Uriel in China 2002 5. Modern Handicaps, Timeless Injustice 21. China and the Foreign Country 27. Girls, Boys, an Ignorant Doctor 31. Kafka, Iago, Mind Control, Immorality, Tramphood, Relativism, Mixed Horses, CIA 33. Falseness to Self and Others 38. Cherry Tops Off Death Threat (Courtesy of Wang Yan) 40. More Bile From a Once-Reticent Chinese Girl 42. Feeling (Partially) Neglected 46. Charlotte Bronte, Patsy Cline and Me 54. Rules, Contracts, Chinese Modernization 58. Canadian Embassy Serves Client 59. Seeking Private Resolution of a Sensitive Matter 60. Public Resolution of a Sensitive Matter 65. Chinese Legal Gladiator to the Rescue 66. Reflecting on the Western Difference (Part 1) 67. Reflecting on the Western Difference (Part 2) 68. Reflecting on the Western Difference (Part 3) 69. Reflecting on the Western Difference (Part 4) 74. Decision from the Ontario Superior Court 75. Lone Man Left Unpersuaded by Superior Court 76. No Contrition on Ketcheson 77. The Law Society of Upper Canada 81. Preparing Submission to Arbitrator 82. Incurious Fulbright Scholar 84. The Chinese Perspective, Explained At Last 86. Arbitration Preliminaries Dawn 87. The Mediation Option for Foreign Experts in Contract Disputes
IntroductionI was an instructor at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, China's diplomacy school, from September to November, 2002. The experience is described in a series of 93 letters I sent (via email) to a list of 75 people from December, 2002 to May, 2003. The assembled letters appear below.Note: The letters refer to the China Foreign Affairs University by its name at the time the letters were written -- "Foreign Affairs College," or "FAC."
1. Darker, Deeper: Uriel in China 2002Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 4:54 AMMy first China story (http://urielw.com/china), two years ago, could be viewed as a bit of a roller coaster ride. There were some thrills and chills. A bad guy was featured in the form of a petulant young woman, not yet out of her teens, guilty mainly of immaturity. University administrators would occasionally appear whose expedients might excite demurrals from idealists. There were vomiting episodes here and there. This year, folks, we enter a different realm. We have left the amusement park altogether, and it would not be amiss for you to buckle your seatbelts. My new China story is truly a journey into the heart of darkness, with treachery and malfeasance writhing under every rock and behind every construction crane. My story has SEX -- or at least, definite intimations thereof. It has violence and murder -- or at any rate, indubitable threats to commit same. It has hypocrisy, cursing, rebellion, dementia, mass hysteria, and sly manipulators pulling strings behind the scenes. You will also witness flagrant breaches of contract. And just yesterday (the story is ongoing), we had petty theft by a devious sycophant. It is possible that there has also been a virtually omnipotent force rumbling through subterranean passages of this tale, although your narrator's limited perspective precludes a rendering of this subplot. Our setting is a university with unique significance for the nation, and the Communist government may not be indifferent to these proceedings. For comic contrast you'll also be given a peek at the gibbering functionaries of the Canadian Embassy. This is not fiction, and I will put you on notice right now that several loose ends will remain unresolved at our conclusion. There are mysteries here I've been unable to penetrate, despite determined efforts. But it might be unwise to sniff at my inquisitorial skills if you have not operated in this culture. The backdrop for all this action is again CHINA -- whose rise, the Dec. 2 New York Times reminds us, may be "the most important long-term trend in the world." One other thing remains unchanged: the author, yours truly, who has preserved his partiality for the simple truth, and his contempt for saccharine illusions.
2. The Cloudless SkySent: Monday, December 23, 2002 12:44 AMI contracted last May, while still teaching at Tsinghua University, to teach at Beijing's Foreign Affairs College (FAC) for the 2002-3 academic year. FAC is a small but unique university in China, described by its website (http://www.fac.edu.cn/eindex/overview.htm) thus:
FAC seemed more suited to the socio-political-legal themes of my teaching than Tsinghua (China's supreme science university), so it was with positive anticipation that I returned to Beijing late last August, after a summer holiday in Toronto. We were comfortably housed, my FAC colleagues and I, in what would be a "luxury condo" in Toronto. My circumstances in my successive China jobs were continuing to improve: I'd started two years earlier in the seedy "Shooting Hotel," remote from everything in Beijing other than the scenic mountain attractions known as Fragrant Hills and Badachu. I'd advanced the following year to ample though dilapidated quarters in the midst of the Tsinghua campus's lovely parks and lakes. At FAC I was now housed in a modern one-bedroom suite on the 7'th floor of a newly built building with an elevator. Tsinghua had been in the Haidian district, an area in the northwest of Beijing which is home to many universities. Beijing University, China's other premier university, was a 5-minute bike ride from where I was living, and many other universities were also nearby. This advantage of Tsinghua was countered, in my new home at FAC, by FAC's proximity to the city centre. I could bike to Tiananmen Square and other attractions in the core of the city in 30 minutes. And although the tiny campus was not itself particularly appealing, I could occasionally visit the pleasant Yuyuantan Park to the west or Houhai Lake (tangentially connected to later troubles) to the east. I had seven 90-minute classes weekly: - FAC's third-year undergraduate law students (divided into 2 classes); - FAC's second-year diplomacy students (divided into 2 classes). These students already have a 4-year bachelor's degree and are completing a second bachelor's degree which is of 2-years' duration. - FAC's first-year, part-time, continuing education students (divided into 2 classes). These students have completed a 2- or 3-year diploma and are beginning a 3-year, part-time supplementary program leading to a Bachelor's degree in English. - FAC's first-year, full-time continuing education students. These students have completed a 2- or 3-year diploma and are beginning a 2-year, full-time supplementary program leading to a Bachelor's degree in English. The first-year, full-time continuing ed class was the only large class, with about 45 students. The other classes had only 15 to 20 students each. As in my two previous China teaching jobs, I based my teaching on reading materials I'd select -- typically New York Times articles, sometimes classic literature, occasionally other things. My students' eyes were opened to important American public issues and controversies they'd had no idea about. And we didn't just gloss over them. We'd examine details of the conflicting positions of various parties -- their interests and motives, the logic of their arguments. There were universal lessons being learnt about both public affairs and logical reasoning. I don't think it'd be a bad idea if there were more of this type of thing in the normal undergraduate diet, not just in China but everywhere. There might be more hope for the world if its citizenry were more enlightened about these things. But this kind of subject matter does not actually fit directly into any academic discipline. It's not "serious" enough -- there's no priesthood, no technical argot, no barriers to entry to stop any wise guy from threatening the established hierarchy. Still, it's possible for a teacher to circumvent academic propriety and pursue useful and instructive stuff like this. He/she simply has to go to China (as a Westerner) and get a job teaching courses with innocuous-sounding titles like "Topical English." I tended to choose readings in which the meaning was (1) not self-evident, yet (2) unmistakable once explained. The students' initial interpretations were almost invariably wrong. This brought them an additional insight which I think should be widely conveyed to students everywhere: how fallible they are; how prone to misconception; and the importance of reflection, if the objective is truth. I don't think I flatter myself unduly in thinking my classes were exceptionally stimulating for my students. I received a fair amount of positive feedback, often mentioning my "strictness" and their "nervousness" in my classes. It seemed that my penchant for demanding full attention during the 90 minutes we spent together weekly, combined with my expectation that they actually engage their brains rather than merely regurgitating what I told them, was something quite extraordinary in their experience. These are excerpts from (unsolicited) emails sent by various students:
As late as an idle weekend in early November I could think: "I feel almost like a king in this place." I'd biked on impulse to another university nearby and accosted a trio of girls -- total strangers, 18-year-old undergrads -- and chatted with them for several minutes. They were friendly, interested, totally trusting. One of them, more forward than her friends, gave me her phone number and offered to show me around her university. Recounting this later to some FAC colleagues, we reflected on how, in the grossly polluted culture of the U.S, this would never happen in a million years. They joked that I'd probably be arrested just for approaching the girls. They were Americans, Mormons, conservatives, they probably voted Republican -- in other words, we had totally different values -- but on this, an obvious contrast between China and the U.S., we could agree. Life was good here. The work was stimulating and enjoyable; my students knew they were getting something unique and were appreciative; I'd discovered some really good local restaurants. Everything was generally quite pleasant. How could I foresee the crash landing? The peremptory eviction from my comfortable quarters (not to mention the brief but obligatory exit from the country)? The downturned heads, the frowns, the carping and the sneers? And most of all, the absurd breadth of the opposition?
3. Exploitation and DissentSent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 3:49 PM"Suits Say Wal-Mart Forces Workers to Toil Off the Clock" (New York Times, June 25, 2002) was one of the articles I did with my 3'rd-year law students at FAC. It's summarized by the opening paragraphs:
As it turned out, this story strikes a chord in China, where cheating employees out of overtime pay (which is illegal in China as well as the U.S.) is apparently common practice. The article also offered this affecting anecdote:
It's probably all true. But I was teaching skepticism and critical thinking, so students had to consider that the defense's viewpoint was not totally implausible:
These are telling points. The Times could easily enough verify whether it's true that employees get a handbook saying unpaid overtime violates policy. Is the policy clearly and simply spelled out? Is there a workable procedure for employees to address violations? And where did the Times find those 40 employees it interviewed? Were they selected from among the plaintiffs (a biased sample)? Are we talking about 40 people out of a million -- maybe people coached to lie by ambulance-chasers who hooked them with toll-free ads? And why would so few employees report such violations to regulators if the problem is indeed widespread? One would think even lowly, uneducated workers would know that unpaid overtime is illegal. The article mostly ignores these natural questions, but does offer:
Is regulation really so ridiculous in the U.S. that poor workers have to risk their livelihoods to report breaches of such basic rights? There's no mechanism for anonymous complaints? Again, the Times is mute. But it was another question for students to consider. It would be especially brazen of Wal-Mart to permit such breaches after having already faced legal trouble over these issues. The article reports that "[t]wo years ago, Wal-Mart paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit that asserted that 69,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Colorado had worked off the clock." Whatever the truth -- and this article, as is so often the case with the New York Times, does a disappointing job of helping the reader form an educated guess -- one can at least conclude that something's weird in that land of America which so obsesses the Chinese. Either: 1. The charges are true, in which case it would seem there is something seriously wrong with the regulatory environment (otherwise such blatant legal breaches by the nation's top retailer could not develop into a widespread problem in the first place); or 2. It's possible for lawyer chicanery to bring about a lengthy feature article in a major newspaper which would give most readers the strong impression that the nation's top retailer is illegally cheating poor workers. In the class discussion it transpired that the aunt of one of the students was in this kind of situation -- working overtime without pay, and afraid to complain lest she lose the job. (Several of my night school students, who worked by day, also worked overtime without pay.) There were conflicting views among the students as to the provisions of Chinese law, but I asked them to check it out, and the following week they were confident they knew the exact terms. I found their report strange, but the class insisted that all employees, hourly and salaried, even managers and executives, must by law be paid (straight-time) for all overtime worked. How is hourly pay determined for salaried workers? It's inferred by dividing the weekly salary by 40 hours. Employees may sue within 6 months to recoup any unpaid overtime worked during that period. So how to explain the aunt's plight? The answer, of course, was that even if she recouped for 6 months, she'd probably lose her job; so she didn't sue. This was clearly defective legislation in that it didn't achieve its ostensible purpose. I asked the students how to repair it. No one gave me a very good answer. Someone suggested giving fired employees access to a tribunal to determine whether they were fired improperly, as the aunt feared would happen to her. But of course that wouldn't work -- a company could contrive other reasons for firing someone. The students didn't seem much impressed with the proposal I offered for repairing the legislation, but no one gave me a good counter-argument. The next week I had a test which included the same question -- how to repair the law to make it more effective. Almost no one got it right. But this time, in the discussion following the test, there was some ire in their objections to my proposed reform. An academic discussion is one thing, but grades are not something Chinese students kid around about (which is why tests were always a good way to restore flagging attention spans). The contentiousness of this issue was unusual, as the students rarely disagreed much with me about anything, even though my written course introduction (distributed at the beginning of the semester) encouraged them to offer contrary views. It was strange to have the class so unified in its disagreement, yet unable to offer a counterargument that made sense. Of course, I didn't relent, since no one offered a decent reason why I should. So it was pretty much me against the whole class of law students, on an issue of Chinese law. We ultimately moved on without ever resolving the matter. This singular episode was probably an element in the students' thought processes, a few weeks later, when they wrote their letters to the administration complaining of my intolerance for dissent (as one item among I don't know how many other grievances).
4. Anonymous ComplaintsSent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 2:13 AM
Goodness, I didn't mean "anonymous complaints" in that last missive. I meant "confidential complaints"! Luckily no one picked up on this. (No one, for that matter, wondered what right answer I had in mind for how to repair the defective Chinese employment law, so there may be more than just luck at work here.) The slip-up is explainable. I've recently been attempting to address a slew of anonymous complaints targetting ... myself. The complaints were transmitted, by phone and email, to anyplace they had the best chance of causing harm: the presidents' offices, and the "foreign affairs" offices, of the successive universities where I taught. (At Chinese universities, a "foreign affairs office" is typically responsible for dealing with foreign teacher issues.) No one has been good enough to let me see a copy of any of these email messages, but a sample from a series of emails sent to me by the same author, last June and July, serves to gauge his finer feelings and sentiments:
The writer is a Chinese man of about 38 who lives and works in Tianjin, near Beijing. He calls himself Gary Tan, and the handle he uses while cruising on OICQ is "Unfaithful". (This according to a friend -- I've never used ICQ / OICQ.) Tan also busied himself, when not sending email to me or my employers, by harassing me at home with hang-up phone calls. The frequency of these calls intensified to the point that during my final month at FAC I resorted to screening all incoming calls through my answering machine. Really, it was like something out of the U.S. Unfortunately, because China is in some respects far less enlightened than the West, this individual succeeded in inflicting some damage. And he was able to do it without ever identifying himself, simply through anonymous swipes from the shadows. He knows who I am, but I still don't know his real name, his address, or whom he works for. What's Tan's beef? In 1999, he met and began a relationship with a female university student referred to here as X. X was 21 years old at the time. He met X randomly via a "wrong telephone number" to her dorm. I met X during the spring of 2002 when she helped organize a public lecture I delivered at her university. We became friends, and I learned about her "boyfriend" Gary Tan. He would call her on the cellphone he had given her (which he retrieved after they broke up) with the same neurotic frequency that later characterized his calls to me. He had told her they would eventually marry. But when she'd ask for information (e.g. financial savings) he would criticize her for not trusting him. She never met his parents, friends or colleagues. She did not know his address or have any identifying information about him other than his cellphone number. He had obtained her email password and was reading her email messages without her knowledge. As a result she failed to receive some routine emails I sent her to arrange my lecture at her university. Did she want to separate from him, I asked her. She responded: "He wouldn't accept it." Did she love him? About 70%, she answered. The man was known by her roommates to be obsessive and jealous. He discouraged her from spending time with friends. He got information about me from her and harassed me via phone calls and emails, telling me repeatedly to "fuck off." I did the right thing. I urged X to separate from him. Eventually she summoned the courage to do so. In November, 2002, after learning of her ex's messages to my universities, I contacted X and she replied:
The contemptible Gary Tan does not, one hopes, represent any significant proportion of Chinese boyfriends. But what is significant is that he was able -- at least to some degree -- to bend the administrations of two prestigious Chinese universities to his malicious purposes, through the risk-free expedient of anonymous messages. I finally learned of Tan's many messages to the Tsinghua and FAC administrations during the meeting, in mid-November, in which FAC Assistant President Heng Xiaojun fired me. He stressed that the messages hadn't been a significant factor in his decision. But in the short list of justifications he offered, the one occupying first place was the anonymous phone calls and email messages he said FAC had been receiving "from all over Beijing" since the beginning of the semester. I was frankly amazed to learn of these messages, which turned out to have begun last June when I was still completing my year at Tsinghua. No hint of the messages had ever reached me. A short time after this discovery, I arranged with one of my top Tsinghua students from last year, a young woman who is also a superior science student, to go together, without appointments, to various offices at Tsinghua: - the foreign languages department where I'd worked; - the foreign affairs office; - the president's office; and - the software institute, where an offer of a short position last summer teaching database programming, which had been virtually finalized, mysteriously fell through at the last minute. My objective -- to confront and repudiate malicious charges about myself -- was valid, reasonable, honorable. And, in China, probably doomed to failure from the start. The foreign languages department chairman, welcoming and ushering my student and me into a meeting room, declared that he had never heard of such messages. The two professors from the Tsinghua software institute, who'd all but signed the dotted job offer line 6 months previously -- who'd introduced me to my teaching assistant and asked that I send him preparatory materials for the database course -- had likewise never encountered messages of any such description. The summer job, they averred as we met them together, had failed to materialize simply because of timetable considerations. As for the abrupt cessation of communication at their end, they had a ready explanation: Chinese culture. One does not openly present a "no" response, they pointed out. A decision not to hire is conveyed by saying nothing. At the president's office, they wouldn't even give us an assistant's name. A secretary gave us her email address and promised -- falsely, it turned out -- to respond when I wrote to her about the issue. It can perhaps be rated a triumph that I got one of the people we ambushed -- the startled deputy director of the Tsinghua foreign affairs office, Li Hongyu -- to even acknowledge the existence of these anonymous emails. Following a show of ignorance, her defenses withered in the face of my open disbelief, and she reluctantly acknowledged that, yes, there had been messages. And the man had contacted "many people" at Tsinghua, including the president's office and some unnamed teacher in the foreign languages department. I wanted something more: an admission that the Tsinghua foreign affairs office had perpetrated the foolishness (which would be actionable in the West) of passing these libels along to others, including my subsequent employer, FAC. But at this she drew the line, adamantly insisting that the information had not gone beyond their office. That was a lie, almost certainly. Her boss, Xia Guangzhi, was unavailable then, but I called him later. He too insisted that the foreign affairs office had not spread the information. He asked me what made me so certain. I said I couldn't reveal my sources. He said come back when you have something more concrete. I gave a ring to Li Jing, the deputy director of FAC's foreign affairs office. This was after my firing by FAC and I didn't expect much from her. She was less than eager to talk about the anonymous emails, saying it had been long ago. She mentioned that messages had been received at the FAC president's office before her office. I asked for a copy of the messages. She said they'd been trashed. (I'd have been surprised to get them from her, but I thought an initial refusal might make her more amenable to subsequent queries.) I then asked who exactly from the Tsinghua foreign affairs office had passed along the information from the messages. She said she couldn't identify the person (thus confirming that the communication had occurred). It had been "waiban to waiban," she explained -- privileged communication. ("Waiban" means foreign affairs office.) I told her the boss of the foreign affairs office at Tsinghua had insisted that no one from his office had called her office. I added: "I don't believe him, I believe you." She asked why I trusted her -- maybe she was the one who was lying. Oh, it was all a fine joke to her, this affair. To quell her high spirits, I told her not to waste my time. And I said I wanted her to call Tsinghua and set Xia Guangzhi straight. She didn't want to, but she agreed to receive his call and let him know who from his office had called her. I now had the "more concrete" information Xia Guangzhi had demanded. I emailed him:
He replied:
And, as I write, that is the last I've heard from him. Twelve days later I tried prodding:
No response. But even my young undergraduates, steeped in the ways of China, have no difficulty understanding this. The man has no reason to respond. I have no power over him. No superior will give him any grief for neglecting me. (This is borne out by the president's office's indifference.) No publicity will ever come of this. The course of least trouble is to ignore me.
5. Modern Handicaps, Timeless InjusticeSent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 5:08 PM"Error!" protests a correspondent. "I DID wonder what the right answer you had in mind was and would have asked you in my next message. I also wondered why you would expect your students to give you that answer, your answer, when it seems (at least this is how I understand your presentation) that they didn't agree with you that this was the right way??? And to be able to judge, it would have been helpful if you had provided the answer in question." Since you ask: China's employment law should be fixed by extending the 6-month limitation so that employees can claim unpaid overtime as far back as, say, 10 years. Then an employee needn't risk termination to get paid for work done. He can simply wait until he's retired or has left the company for other reasons, and recover the money then. The 6-month limit gives employers a rational incentive to cheat. With a 10-year limit, the money they'd otherwise be saving looks more like a liability -- an expenditure that's merely been postponed. Obviously, practicability depends on a reasonable regulatory system (perhaps specialized employment law tribunals) that is accessible to workers; and fact determination is more difficult with the longer timeframe. But extending the time limit corrects the central flaw in the existing legislation as the students described it to me. How could I demand an answer on a test which the students had already rejected? The students in my two law classes were relatively interested, attentive, and active in responding to questions. But they're modern young people, plagued by modern handicaps. They prefer lots of kinetic visuals to the coldness of abstract concepts. Concentration of any duration makes them restless for the touch of a cellphone, the click of a mouse. Confinement to an intellectual space arouses the whispering voices implanted by the world's ubiquitous panderers: "Shuck all this. Live free. Be cool. Be your own person. Live life! Go for the extreme. Yeah baaaay-beeeeeee -- whooooo!" Drudge work -- doing 10,000 exercises -- is, I have the sense, more familiar to the students, and more feasible, than serious reflection, since it consists mostly of shackling themselves to a desk and keeping their eyes pried open. But thinking, analyzing, weighing, exploring -- that's arduous combat. A former Tsinghua student writes, a few days ago:
The issue of the Chinese law's defects arose from the discussion of the Wal-Mart article. I probably asked if similar things happen here, and the student with the aunt described the aunt's situation. By the time I got to asking about the law's defects, as I recall, some students had tuned out. The discussion had gotten too intricate; they were resting. I often encountered this in my teaching. Students lacked mental energy. It was just one 90-minute class weekly that they had with me, with a 10-minute break in the middle (and this particular weekly class began at 8:00 AM), but it was too hard to concentrate for that long. I don't think concentrating for 90 minutes would be too hard if their brains underwent adequate exercise in their other classes; but I gather they didn't. I don't remember exactly the responses given when I posed my "How to fix the law?" question, but none were sound. Probably some were impractical, others unclear. Maybe I half-drew the proposal I was looking for out of one student. I think most were hardly paying attention at that point. Some expressed disagreement with the idea but were weary and disinclined to argue. I pushed them to explain what was wrong with the idea but their interest was not engaged. Well. Isn't this what tests are for? Education should not be democratic. Student comfort is not the criterion. My objective was not to get them informed about Wal-Mart workers, or to fill mental receptacles with any other kind of data, but to improve their ability to think independently. So I didn't see a need to relent in my demand that these lawyers-to-be identify the critical defect in their own law as they'd just described it to me -- a law which patently failed to serve its nominal purpose. We hadn't dwelt much on the proposed law fix, so when we had the test, at least one week later, apparently no one remembered what I'd proposed. And virtually no one got any marks on that question. However, I had their attention when we discussed the issue a second time, after the test. Unfortunately, while they stuck to their contrary attitude, they still didn't have any coherent arguments to back it up. An American friend in Beijing came up with a wholly novel objection to my proposal on moral grounds. He felt it'd be sneaky for an employee to quietly plan to, as he viewed it, betray his employer years later, and that he should "take responsibility" and have the "courage" to confront his employer. I quite disagree, but the thinking is at least clear enough that it can be articulated.
One reader endorses the insight of my young students, too worldly-wise to expect justice. "That's life," she writes. "Old La Fontaine said it best:"
6. Vacuous DiplomatsSent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 10:38 AMThere was enthusiasm and progress in most of my classes, sure. But not all were intellectual thrill rides. One group in particular stood out from the beginning for its unshakable mental inertness: my Monday class of Diplomacy students. These were "double degree" students -- they already had 4-year Bachelor's degrees in English and had proceeded directly into their current 2-year Foreign Affairs (or "Diplomacy") program, which led to a second Bachelor's degree. They were in the second and final year of this program. In addition to regular university exams, these students wrote exams conducted by China's Foreign Ministry, and selected students underwent extensive interviews to work there after graduation. Shortly after the start of the semester, FAC held an "opening ceremony" before an audience of about 500. I and the ten or so other Western teachers were given front-row seats and assigned individual interpreters. A few dignitaries spoke, notably the Chinese Vice-Premier, Qian Qichen. He delivered a hard-hitting foreign policy speech (partly for the benefit of his front-row listeners?) enumerating many of China's grievances against the U.S. Among other things -- the U.S. spy plane, the Yugoslav embassy bombing, the 1989 sanctions (following the Tiananmen Square democracy movement), the 1995 visit to the U.S. by the Taiwanese president, America's general efforts to impose its ideology and economic system on the rest of the world -- he noted that the 1949 revolution establishing the modern Chinese state had been viewed by the U.S. at the time as "intolerable." Of students heading for careers representing China in the international arena, the Vice-Premier said they would encounter differences, pressure, and that they had to learn to "stand firm." Several remarks by the Vice-Premier and other speakers indicated that the Diplomacy program represented the main thrust of the school's mission -- as indeed the name of the school suggests. At several points it was as if the speakers were under the impression that all of the school's students were headed for careers representing China (although Foreign Affairs was only one of the school's six departments). But the vacuity of the Monday class was almost farcical. It was a puzzle why they were so much deader than the other group of second-year Diplomacy students, which I taught on Tuesdays. At one point it was suggested that the two classes had been divided according to ability, but it wasn't clear whether that was true. (I used to pursue questions like this in China but I've largely given up -- no one seems to know the answers (no one has asked the questions), and after battling a vortex of contradictions you end up with little more than when you started, except all around you people are nursing sensibilities bruised by your demands for unambiguous information.) The various classes I taught indeed had different characteristics. FAC asked the foreign teachers for a report one month into the semester. Here are excerpts from mine:
On that last note, I smile to think how privileged we were, my students and I, that I possessed the power to secure my classrooms against electronic intrusions. Consider the humiliating situation of increasing numbers of American university professors:
7. Guilty InterludeSent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 4:09 PMI sometimes call friends here, students, and have a conversation like this: "Hello," my friend will whisper. "Hi. Why are you whispering?" (Innocently.) "I'm in class." "Oh.... The teacher's giving the lesson -- now?" "Yeah." "Hmm. Well. When's class over?" "What?" "When is your class FINISHED?" "Oh. At four o'clock." "OK. I'll call you back after that." "OK. Bye." "Bye." I hate cellphones. But they are convenient when someone you want to get a hold of has one. Obviously one feels a twinge of guilt. But that's life. Get used to it.
8. Monday Mumbo JumboSent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 12:04 PMIn each of my 7 classes, I requested in the first meeting of the semester that they read a "letter to my students" I'd posted on my website. Weeks later I discovered that none of my Monday diplomats had looked at it. Asked why not, they told me they couldn't access the site. Couldn't access it?! The whole class gave me the quite surprising news that they could not access foreign websites from the FAC computer centre. Had anyone asked the FAC staffer working at the computer centre for help? No. No one had asked. I asked one of the students to accompany me to the FAC computer centre after class. We found the FAC staffer, and I asked the student to ask her about the issue in Chinese. The staffer listened to the student's question and promptly responded: "No, you can access foreign websites." There was a short pause, and the student turned to me, wondering what else I wanted. I was puzzled. Did the student not understand that the staffer's information was a DIRECT CONTRADICTION of what everyone in the class had told me minutes earlier? "Tell her you cannot access foreign websites," I told the student. The student conveyed this in Chinese, and again the staffer answered at once, firmly, indicating access was perfectly possible. The student turned back to me with an embarrassed smile. "Is this information not the exact opposite of what the class just told me?!" I asked the student. The student told me timidly that sometimes she cannot access foreign sites. But the staffer insisted firmly that there was no problem accessing such sites. The student looked at me helplessly, obviously wanting only to escape from the situation. Perhaps this scene gives you a sense of why so many things here are shrouded in confusion. And of how straightforward questions are not the routine way of going about things. Not long after this episode, this particular student was selected -- as one of only four of the double-degree students graduating this year -- to work in the Foreign Ministry after graduation. I wondered if the kind of "standing firm" I'd witnessed was what Vice-Premier Qian Qichen had in mind. I didn't want to spend more time arm-twisting the girl, so I gave her the simple assignment to resolve the foreign access issue and email me later. She sent the explanation shortly afterwards: there were 3 computer rooms; only one was designated for foreign access; students had to use the computers in that room to access foreign websites, not the other two rooms. "I think I should apologize for my inability to reach your website," she wrote. "Most our classmates failed like me because, first, we seldom went to that room since the computers there are older and people always want new computers. Second, the teacher in the computer lab, actually no one ever told us about it. Anyway we know it now." The Mondays. They were "Foreign Affairs" specialists, yet hadn't breached China's boundaries even virtually. Put an obstacle in their path -- and they'd crash and burn. Put someone next to the obstacle to point out the detour -- and they'd ignore her. Inquire if any solution existed -- and they'd swear none did. I unburdened myself of some of these sentiments in an email to all my classes which concluded:
The one substantive response came from a student in my other double-degree class:
To my reply requesting clarification on a couple of points, she responded:
A whole class of students had falsely informed me, their foreign teacher, that foreign websites could not be accessed. What suitable means could I devise for them to do penance? My inspiration led a colleague to write: "This sounds fun !!! As the saying goes, 'Let the punishment fit the crime'..."
9. Social HarmonySent: Monday, January 06, 2003 12:46 PM
(I stipulated in class that the websites had to be English-language and foreign.) Response was swift. Considering that even the central character of "Fear and Failure" -- the girl who'd accompanied me to the computer centre -- apparently didn't read that email until a month later, and then only when spurred, the promptness of the replies this time was dramatic:
The students had a point, so I agreed to postpone the first presentations to October 14 -- the first class following the Oct. 1-7 National Day holiday (commemorating the founding of the state on October 1, 1949). On that day, however, I soon discovered that my brilliant punishment for the class's Internet failures and false excuses had a flaw: during any given presentation, pretty much all students (all but the one presenting), absent a deterrent for inattention, would mentally slip away for the pleasures of idle daydreaming. Why hadn't I foreseen this? (I was also far from blown away by the presentations themselves.) My openly sarcastic email, below, sent to the class after these first presentations, will lose me sympathy in some quarters. But that's just the kind of person you have to resign yourself to having as your narrator. Remember though, this was hands-down my worst class. The style might also be considered a bit heavy-handed, but I was trying to be clear for non-native speakers. I was offended not only by the students' extreme indolence but also by an exchange suggesting an insufferable willingness to pervert independent views for the sake of conformity and the avoidance of the least hint of contention with peers. One presenter, addressing the topic of obesity, wanted to make the point that obese people suffer not only physically but also psychologically because of their lack of personal appeal. Seeking to informally substantiate the unattractiveness of obese people (presumably also to liven things up), she asked a couple of students whether they'd consider dating an obese person. (Incidentally, none of my students was obese.) The girl she asked responded something like: "Well, it would depend on his qualities -- if he's a kind person; if he's compassionate. If he was, then maybe I would go out with him." The presenter nodded, as if this was precisely what she'd been soliciting: "If the person is very fat, you don't want to spend time with them. You don't feel like getting close or becoming involved ...." She invited the girl to elaborate. "Well, if the person is too fat, then you don't want to get into a relationship ...." "That's right," the presenter agreed. "People don't want to get into a relationship with very fat people. And so that's why they also have psychological problems ...." "Hold on a sec," I interposed. I pointed out that the girl had reversed her initial response as soon as she realized what the presenter wanted. (Such behavior was apparently so ordinary and unremarkable that no one else seemed to have noticed.) And while it's great to solicit audience views, I added to the presenter, "you don't handle unexpected feedback by pretending it supports your point." The two students smiled in acknowledgment. And the presentation proceeded.
10. Rousing the RecalcitrantSent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 12:05 AMMy sarcasm caused anguish and suffering for the Monday Diplomacy students. It was richly deserved, no question. But that made it hurt all the more. I'd certainly tried to stimulate the students' interest. But their dedication to deadness was fierce. It had gotten to the point where my efforts were colliding with my Golden Rule: a teacher should never work harder than his students. Resorting to sarcasm was the natural corollary -- with students like these, sarcasm was effortless. It was also the last remaining hope for conjuring life. One student was roused to wring out the following ode, likely his greatest expenditure of energy of the semester. The exertion left him too depleted to correspond any further after my reply. [Note: I am not really violating the intent of his request -- "please don't mention the argument between you and me to the public." He's thinking of classroom discussions of issues in which the concerned students were identified -- e.g. the "Fear and Failure" incident.]
11. Fukien FrazzlementSent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 5:52 PMI am hoping my Monday Diplomacy correspondent's characterization of my classroom comportment -- shouting, swearing, drawing students into wagers -- raised eyebrows among my readers. "This isn't the Uriel we know and respect," you may have thought. You may also have wondered whether it's wise for a Canadian teaching in China to share with students an enthusiasm for their nation's upcoming military defeats. Frankly, that's a distortion, and a remark I made was taken out of context. Generally speaking, my words and deeds have at all times been appropriate. But did I utter the F word? Now look. I'm an emissary of Western culture, Western civilization, in a faraway and very different land. I am paid to transfer not merely linguistic skills to my young charges, but cultural awareness and insight and general communications aptitude. It is my job. It's a responsibility I take seriously. It is true I have strived to convey some level of appreciation for the flavor of American speech patterns. For example, a frequently heard Chinese response to "Thank you" is "Not at all," which many Chinese don't realize is really only fitting if you're a matron of aristocratic pretensions at the opera. To take another example, imagine President Bush getting up in the morning, trudging down to the front door of the White House, stooping to swipe the New York Times from under the mat (with a sour look), trudging to the breakfast table to get his coffee from Laura, and turning the pages to the hated Prof. Paul Krugman's column:
Now, is it or is it not fair to say that a normal American man in President Bush's position would typically emit an infuriated "FUCK!!!!" on reading the above? As indeed the President must have? I'll allow I briefly staged a rendition of said reaction for educational purposes.
12. The Subtle DiplomatSent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 10:57 AMI know my reply to the student, which I quote fully below, is going to push my credit with some readers to new lows. People are prone to a sense that an impassioned plea such as his demands respectful solemnity; that simple decency demands contrition, or at least sorrow, from the object of such a heartfelt petition. But the key to this student's real passion was in his phrase, "a relaxing class is good to all of us." It wasn't grief over my "smearing" of the Creator's creations that precipitated his feat of oratory, his woodpecker-like succession of Could-you-kindly-enough-to-tell-me's. It was nothing more virtuous than a hunger for "relaxation." We'd spoken in person after class the day before he sent his message. He said some students were exclusively focussed on getting jobs (they graduate in July) and had no interest in their studies, and that I should accommodate them. Some students. Not himself, certainly. Some time later, also, when my job was fully into "Troubled" mode, he warned of "a conspiracy to overthrow you" on the part of certain other students. But the complaints I heard about sounded awfully much like his own. In case his advice that I cooperate with students' desires to learn nothing did not persuade me, he had an independent objection to my style of throwing questions at them. Noting that my questions demonstrated how clever I was, he pointed out that it's sometimes smart to act stupid even when you're not. Seems diplomacy school has taught him well. I objected that this was after all a university -- not some kind of corporation or political situation where you have to position yourself to stab people in the back. "Come on!" he said indignantly."This is not the Ivy League." His words. He'd come to my attention even at the very beginning of the semester, when he objected after class to our overly detailed examinations of readings. He preferred just to get the "gist." (My view, incidentally, is that just getting the "gist" generally means getting it all wrong.) But then another student spoke up and said she liked the way we were examining the readings. He hastily said he did too.
13. Applauding BanalitySent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 4:04 PMIt certainly seemed, didn't it, that that issue of foreign web access was thoroughly resolved. The students had swallowed my "Fear & Failure" rebuke; student responses had acknowledged the failures ("I think I should apologize ... Most our classmates failed like me ... actually no one ever told us about it. Anyway we know it now"); the Monday diplomats were giving presentations every week based on information obtained from foreign websites. And yet ... about a month later my Law students insisted they couldn't access foreign websites. Incredulous, I hauled one of them after class to the computer centre where we spoke to the same staffer. There was a lot of Chinese back-and-forth. Then it was explained that something had been fixed. Foreign web access had just started working again. It hadn't been working before? I struggled to get clear information. But after some time I gave up, once again. Like I said before, you gotta learn to live with ambiguity around here.
For those Diplomacy class presentations, I offered students these additional topics: - junk food - the fight against tobacco - Chinese students who go to the U.S. - scientific research about culture, its effects on thinking and personality, statistics on behavior - the U.S. or European antitrust case against Microsoft One student delivered a presentation on the topic of Chinese students in the U.S. He spoke easily, obviously confident, not nervous at all. (Most students were at least somewhat nervous.) He began with a couple of jokes: "They say there are two reasons for going to the U.S. To see a doctor, or to get an education." The students laughed. "It's also said that if you love someone, you should send them to the U.S. If you hate someone, you should do the same." The students laughed some more. He proceeded with his presentation, which consisted essentially of these points: - One motive for going to the U.S. is the lack of educational opportunities in China. - The U.S. offers "first class hardware and software." [?] - It's a happy, open and democratic society, where people lead "colorful" lives. - However, some Chinese have bitter experiences and feel culture shock. - Life is "colorful" there [again]. It's exciting, but not easy. - About 15,000 return to China, where there are many economic opportunities. Having relieved himself of these thoughts, the student concluded his presentation. It had taken about four minutes, while others had generally been about 10 minutes. His classmates applauded -- as they hadn't for any of the preceding presentations. Why? Purely because of his confident delivery? Or was it that he was important, connected in some way? Or was he popular? If so, was it because he was unusually tall? It would likely have been futile to pursue these questions. They probably wouldn't even know themselves. So I took another ambiguity pill. (Each one goes down smoother than the last.) As for the presentation, I hate to be a skeptic, but couldn't a compendium of vacuous cliches like this be pulled off practically off the cuff, with zero preparation? I'd proposed the topic because although going to the U.S., at least for university study, is a major objective for many students here, many who go undoubtedly have negative experiences. Learning something about these experiences-- something beyond a trite reference to "culture shock" -- is what would have been interesting.
14. Update on Xia Guangzhi!Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 12:32 PM"As I write," I wrote long ago, "that is the last I've heard from him." The person referred to was Xia Guangzhi, boss of the Tsinghua Foreign Affairs Office. His deathless words had been: "I will look into the matter and reply to you later." "The matter" was my complaint that his office had passed along anonymous messages about me to my new employer (FAC). Prognostications from China and all over the globe were that Mr. Xia's silence would endure; that complete quiescence was the logical expectation in light of the man's incentives. But the torch of human justice burns more brightly than many, apparently, believe. His conscience, if not his incentives, impelled him to produce this followup:
One thing is heartwarming here, anyway. One can quibble over "My office has done nothing wrong," but at least -- looking on the bright side here -- there is a desire to believe that his office does not do bad things. So, theoretically, his perceptions, infirm though they be, act as a kind of loose check on his malfeasance. Admittedly, it's a bit of a strain to see the bright side. The initial inclination is to say -- Hey, like, it's great that you've satisfied yourself that my ex-employer, with whom I'm currently in a contract dispute that's probably soon going to come before a government arbitrator, takes the position that I was fired because of something I did, but what about responding to the point -- your own office's actions -- which it happens you've left unaddressed? But that would require perhaps more acuteness than it's safe to assume. There are those infirm perceptions to be breached. There is something that should be more palpable for him than his office's relatively abstract offense of having communicated something it shouldn't have -- namely, the false information he personally gave me. That arrow, I thought, stood a better chance of surviving the vicissitudes of flight:
But he hasn't replied. As I write, his message above is the last I've heard from him.
15. Freedom versus ValorSent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 8:07 PMNow where were we before Mr. Xia's highly worthwhile interpolation? Far short, perhaps, of where we should be by now. I admit it, I've indulged a foolish fondness for lingering. We've paused, too too frequently no doubt, to smell the roses ... yes, sometimes less savory odors too. And it's occasionally been only vague scents that have held us up, indiscernible whiffs, traces of je-ne-sais-quoi's that could represent white, black, sweet, sour, life, death. I may have tested your patience, like a tour bus conductor taking too many payoffs from souvenir shops along the route. One passenger reports the sensation of watching a car wreck in slow motion. After -- what is it, 14 chapters? -- one feels entitled to the main collision. And why? I ask myself. Why, for example, have we dwelt at such length on my "hands-down worst class"? I think the answer must be that it was the most colorful. The same correspondent (his eyes on the road, keeping watch for any calamity) adds that one would think the Chinese would recognize the "harsh" notion I embody of what a teacher should be: "it is one that has been, ironically enough, popularized by the Chinese themselves, or at least our mass market version of their culture. I'm thinking here of the Zen master, the sometimes brutal, mystifying teacher who pushes his students right outside of their skin, of their comfortable notions of themselves and the world, in order that they may truly see themselves and the world." By way of an approach to the main collision, let me at this juncture introduce one person who was left entirely cold by my Zen mastery: Prof. Wang Yan, an exceedingly fine lady and member in good standing of the FAC administration. I need to come out and make an announcement here. That is frankly a redirection of my original characterization of Prof. Wang. I was initially imbued with a wild sense of glorious freedom as I contemplated this next subject -- a freedom I've learned not to take for granted -- and the description that burst forth in my resulting flush of loquacity had, rather than the term "fine," a host of epithets I'd sprinkled with joyful abandon. "I ain't in Canada anymore," I exulted. Canada, a nation in which I resided for a time, is not particularly forgiving to writers who fail to observe the proper protocols when referring to connected folks. (The advantages of being "connected" in Canada are well known here. The Chinese even have a term for it -- "guanxi.") Scribblers on Canadian soil ignore the rules at their peril. Wouldn't you know I personally came to the regime's attention during my time within Canada's boundaries -- and was threatened because of something I wrote? An intimidating "WITH PREJUDICE" letter was dispatched to me by one Julian Porter, Q.C., a rude fellow, warning that if I didn't shut up about his friends (the bosses running the Toronto YMCA), various arcane legal processes would be instituted that would leave me penniless. (Text of letter at http://urielw.com/ymca/action-porter.htm.) What does "WITH PREJUDICE" mean, anyways? So, with Canada far in the distance, I fixed my narrative sights on Wang Yan with relish. But then I was suddenly struck by a somber thought: there may be no place on earth where a fellow is truly free to express himself. True, the Tsinghua foreign affairs office stands as a testament to free speech in China. They're obviously at liberty to spread libels with impunity. But that could be a different kettle of fish. It's fully plausible that Prof. Wang herself engineered my ouster from behind the scenes at FAC. And such may be her pull that -- maybe -- she did it merely out of personal pique. One therefore has to admit the possibility, I reasoned, that Canada is not the only country where guanxi counts. And if Prof. Wang has this kind of pull .... Well, think what an anonymous crazy man was able to do when he felt aggrieved. Maybe it'd be the better part of valor for me to go easy on an FAC director.
16. No Free LunchSent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 2:17 PMSo anyway, I first met the excellent Wang Yan last March, before her promotion to her current position as director of the FAC foreign affairs office. She was then vice dean of the English department, and she conducted the sole job interview I was given prior to being offered my teaching position for the 2002-2003 year. Her erect bearing, her style of sweeping into and out of rooms, her self-conscious superficiality and distance created an immediate impression of haughty arrogance, an impression that remained undiminished by the time of our termination meeting eight months later, when I watched her swoop to her boss Heng Xiaojun's side to wordlessly point to something I'd once written that was supposed to bolster his position in the exchange he was having with me. In that original March encounter, I was left distinctly unimpressed by her conduct of the interview. She did most of the talking and elicited almost nothing from me. I had virtually no contact with her once I moved to FAC and began teaching, but it was nonetheless clear that Wang Yan was special. She was unique among my colleagues, Chinese and Western, in her disdain for such elementary courtesies as smiling in acknowledgment when passing in the hallway or exchanging a few words when paths crossed. The grand lady would sweep by, apparently too preoccupied by affairs of state to let mortals in the vicinity distract her. I heard also that she was a bit of a terror when dressing down colleagues or students. What did someone like this do to get promoted, I wondered. I had a fleeting encounter with Wang Yan early in the semester at the FAC "opening ceremony" at which Chinese Vice-Premier Qian Qichen spoke. As I arrived, together with other Western teachers, arrangements were being made for interpreters to sit individually beside or behind us so we'd understand the proceedings. As we were milling about while this was being organized, Wang Yan approached and fixed me with a critical glare: "Will you be needing an interpreter?" What did this mean? If I were one of the exceptional Westerners who spoke Chinese anywhere near well enough to follow such an event, she would hardly be unaware of it. At the time, I had no explanation whatsoever for her apparent hostility. Now I know it may have been because of the crazy man's anonymous messages that I learned about much later. I gazed at her and calmly answered, after a pause of a moment or two: "Guess." This unexpected audacity brought her a split-second of confusion, but she rapidly recovered, maintaining her regal aloofness with the retort: "I don't know; you've been in China several years haven't you?" "No," was all I gave her. I smiled to show insincere regret over the misunderstanding. I'd been in China two years. Not "several." One gets a query something like this occasionally -- a shyly smiling "Do you speak Chinese?" which usually means: "Hey -- you haven't learned our language. And we've learned yours. Shame on you." It's too bad English is the international language. It's also too bad your universities exchange anonymous messages from lunatics maligning responsible teachers. That's life. Get used to it (like I'm trying to). But the query doesn't generally reflect any real hostility; it's just part of the latent attitude of morose victimhood and wounded pride that some Chinese feel vis-a-vis the West. I usually bounce back with a cheerful, "Sure: yi ar san" (one, two, three), which unfailingly brings a laugh. But those who most need to get used to Westerners who don't speak Chinese, I would think, are senior administrators at universities that hire such Westerners as faculty members.
In fairness I will insert some balance here, following a conversation last night with a bright young Chinese woman who has socialized with Westerners in China and is understandably bothered by some behaviors she's seen. Lots of things are screwed up in the West -- think of banks, airlines, Bell Canada (if you know it), the SEC, many many other things -- but what strikes the Westerner in China are the novel (for him) screwups, the unfamiliar types of ridiculousness. What's also sometimes breathtaking for the Westerner in China is the unabashedness of some types of silliness. In the West, where there is at least some comprehension of what's expected, one is accustomed to false pretenses. Some unreflective Westerners my friend has seen thus spend a fair amount of time carping and feeling superior. (I am gambling that this won't produce hoots from unreflective readers.) Furthermore, the lady points out, some of these Westerners, often English teachers in private language schools, while enjoying unearned prestige with some credulous Chinese people as representatives of a superior society, may actually be bums or nobodies where they come from.
But to return to the charming Prof. Wang, I believe there is only one other occasion when we had anything to do with each other. One occasion, that is, prior to The Troubles -- which naturally brought us together again because, as it turned out, she seemed to be considered to be more or less my boss. I was in the foreign affairs office one day, talking with her subordinates Li Jing and Yang Ning about problems with the FAC email service they'd arranged for me (which routinely lost mail). They said they'd report the problems to the responsible parties but they obviously considered it futile. The problems would never get fixed. All right. They were powerless to change that. But why, I asked them, had they arranged this dysfunctional service for me in the first place, and why had we already spent time reporting problems, if they knew the service was hopeless? Wang Yan was constantly swooping in and out of that office (her own was elsewhere, presumably nearby; I never saw it), and she entered as I was posing the question. She never bothered with the FAC service, she announced -- too many emails were lost. She used a different service from home. She then presented a terse observation, a piece of wisdom which had possibly eluded me: "there's no such thing as a free lunch." The merry Li Jing emitted a rich laugh as this point was scored. It was indeed true that FAC did not charge us for the email service. "That's right," she echoed, "no such thing as a free lunch."
17. Pain in the ChestSent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 5:03 PMThe FAC foreign affairs office was the source of some other irritations, beyond dysfunctional email. Various actions or omissions were at odds with the staff's superficial eagerness to help. Why, I wondered, could a little more effort not be spared for us highly valued "foreign experts"? My wondering was done aloud, and the response was ...? Not reflection, repentance, repair -- but resentment. And it looked like it would persist unless I did something to take care of it. So I eventually arranged a meeting with staff member Yang Ning (Rebecca), whom I saw regularly and considered a friend. It was towards the end of this meeting that, out of the blue, I was given my first indication of The Troubles. But it was too unbelievable, so I dismissed it as one of the typical arbitrary misunderstandings that are so prevalent here and didn't give it much further thought. One issue is shown in the following email exchange with Rebecca:
She knew the website would never get updated. So she knew what she was offering was useless. If "world-renowned statesmen" were delivering English-language speeches on campus and we Western teachers were being left oblivious of the events, I felt that that indicated negligence, if not contempt, on the part of FAC. How hard would it be for the foreign affairs office to routinely send an email addressed to all 10 of us to notify us of noteworthy upcoming lectures? That's what Rebecca ultimately began doing, after further prodding. But the above exchange illustrates the resistance to real helpfulness. Another of the irritations involved a physical irritation, a mild chest rash I developed in late September. I ignored it for a while but it worsened, so while travelling in Shandong Province during the National Day holiday week (Oct. 1 to 7), I stopped in at a pharmacy and got some ointment, which helped. When I ran out of the ointment, after returning to FAC, I was advised by Rebecca that the school had a medical clinic that supplied such medications. At the clinic they examined my chest, and we agreed I should get more of the same ointment. However, they didn't have any in their supplies. The routine in such cases was apparently to send the patient to the pharmacy across the street, where he could buy the needed medication and then get reimbursed by the clinic. I went to the pharmacy, where they also had a look at my chest. They also didn't have the medication I'd gotten in Shandong, but they gave me a substitute. About a week later I'd run out of that too so I got another refill from the pharmacy, and got reimbursed a second time from the FAC medical clinic. I was assiduously applying the ointment according to instructions, but the condition persisted, so I finally googled the medicine's name as shown on the package -- Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride Ointment. To my surprise, the results indicated the ointment was used to treat eye infections (or sometimes ear infections). Surely there was some mistake. I dug out the paper insert from the package and found the chemical formula:
C{17}H{18}FN{3}0{3}.HCl.H{2}0 But this exactly matched what I found on the websites. I'd imagined I was carpet-bombing whatever bug had invaded me. But I'd merely been pestering the pest. I shared my revelation with Rebecca, who'd sent me to the FAC medical clinic in the first place. She advised that I go see a real doctor, at a Beijing hospital she named. I was generally pretty busy, but a couple days later I called Susie, one of my Law students, and arranged to go to the hospital with her the next day. She brought a friend, and the three of us set out in a taxi in the afternoon. But on the way I wondered -- Rebecca had implied I should simply go there, but shouldn't some kind of prior arrangement be made? So I had Susie call her from the taxi (using a device possessed by nearly all students). There was a somewhat extensive exchange. Nothing, it seems, is ever simple here. When the call was finished I asked Susie what it was about. She told me Rebecca had asked her to tell the doctor to avoid prescribing expensive medication. The rash had persisted for over 3 weeks, apparently prolonged because of the school clinic's errors. But for Rebecca, it seemed, the school's economy came before my health. I'd have undertaken carpet-bombing at my own expense if the school wouldn't pay for more than harassment campaigns. But if a cheap prescription could be arranged behind my back, the embarrassing issue of who should pay didn't need to arise at all. It was I who'd been wronged. But they were upset, standoffish, silent, because I'd raised it (along with other issues). It was up to me: I had to undertake a diplomatic initiative. This is what I set out to do when I arranged an October 31 meeting with Rebecca. In the meeting, to her credit, she swallowed, admitted error and apologized. So I forgave her. But after we'd talked for a while, she abruptly warned that there had been a mid-term evaluation of my teaching, and that a report to the leaders, signed by all the students, said the students were dissatisfied with my teaching. "Dissatisfied?" I laughed. "The students love my teaching." Had her apology been insincere? Had the bug survived, to replicate further? Was she vexed at the directness that had brought her to an outright apology? But she said it was true -- all the Law students had signed a negative report about me. "I don't believe it," I said. (That didn't mean I didn't trust her personally.) I mentioned that I had an agreement with the school under which I'd be reimbursed for my travel expense from Toronto if my student evaluations were above average. I hoped, I told her, there wouldn't be a dispute over these terms. I asked her: "Were the students pressured in some way?" She had no information suggesting that. But she seemed not fully informed. Perhaps unsure in the face of my skepticism, she said perhaps further investigation was needed. "But Uriel," she added. "When dealing with the students, you should really be ...." I completed the sentence for her: "More gentle." "Yes," she said gravely. What must readers think of me? I'm in fact a perfectly warm and fuzzy teacher. And it remains true to this day that not a few students really did love my teaching. But this view of my ultra-strictness seems to reflect a condition of Chinese universities that is much at odds with what might be imagined in the West. Although certainly students don't have easy lives, and they're pressured by the system to work long hours, my impression of the way they are personally handled by teachers and school authorities is that it is exceedingly mild. It seems that they are hardly ever rebuked; that there is no toughness, no confrontation, no direct arguments, no demands that objective standards be met. I put the question, neutrally, to a Chinese friend who graduated 10 years ago: how are university students treated? It depends on the university, he says, but in many, they're treated very leniently. Why? Because, he explains, the teachers are themselves under considerable pressure to publish articles, and they're relatively indifferent to their teaching. The students face little pressure and are fairly free to do much as they like. Even in their major subjects, students can go to the teacher's home if there is a risk of failing -- before the exam to get hints about contents, afterwards to wheedle for leniency or a few extra points. The CET 4 (College English Test, Level 4) required for graduation is the main threat faced by students. That's run by the government, not the schools, and there's no leniency. And you don't cheat on that test -- the penalties are relatively severe. In university courses, on the other hand, cheating is common and most teachers don't care. My friend is struck by a sudden thought. He had a Western teacher -- a 24-year-old woman from the U.S. "She was very nice, and a very responsible teacher. But she used to get very angry when students cheated," he adds with wonderment. "She was very charming," he continues, "she often smiled, a very nice smile. But she hated it when students cheated." He is wearing a sober expression: "I remember that very clearly." The teacher's peculiarity has left a deep impression. I guess an additional reason teachers might not want to annoy students is the ever-present possibility of anonymous letters.
Among the unresolved mysteries of China, incidentally, is my medical treatment (the only time I've been treated for anything in China). The insert for the Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride Ointment package I bought in Beijing says (in Chinese) that it's suitable for skin rashes (which helps explain why the pharmacy and clinic dispensed it to me). But how can the insert's information conflict with websites of Western pharmaceutical companies that produce the same product? Is Chinese physiology different? It's been suggested that Western people have built up greater resistance to various medications, but that doesn't explain it very satisfactorily either.
18. Uncertain Clouds GatherSent: Monday, January 20, 2003 10:55 PM
The message was really sent Friday, November 1, 2002 11:39 AM (Rebecca's computer clock tended to be incorrectly set), and it struck me as just a little bit peremptory. How can people send an email at 11:39 AM proposing a meeting for 3:00 PM the same day? But isn't that just how you'd expect the imperial Wang Yan to inform a subject of his required audience? If the gulf between my feelings for Wang Yan and, say, puppy dog love, had not been as vast, I might have ... no, not agreed to meet then, certainly not, I had a squash appointment ... but I might have replied. It was regrettable, but please, people, let's fight the tears, worse fates have befallen hubris. Until she heard back, Prof. Wang had a one-sided commitment to present herself at "R 130" at 3 PM. And (although I was working at home and the message reached me promptly) I was unfortunately not disposed to reply til the next morning. Anyway, one thing I learned from the message was that Wang Yan was the boss of the foreign affairs office. I'd never known that. As I rushed out a couple of hours later to get to my squash game on time, I saw that a note had been discreetly affixed outside my apartment door, indicating that her majesty expected me at 3 PM. (Evidently it was known that I was at home.) But hey, I was in a hurry, so I let it ride. That night was a special night. As at Tsinghua the year before, I had two student volunteers in each class (for a total of 14 volunteers) who assisted me by distributing the readings I emailed them and by emailing me student info for my database. I'd invited them for dinner and was meeting them that night at a nice restaurant near FAC. We had a private room with, of course, the obligatory karaoke music box. The vagaries of Beijing traffic returned me to FAC slightly early after squash, so I had a bit of time before the dinner. I went to say hello at the foreign affairs office. Li Jing was indignant. "We were waiting for you. Why didn't you tell us?!" It's nice to have at least one memory of her not mirthful. I was equally indignant: "I was in a hurry." Wang Yan appeared, a slight smile of disdain assuring me I had not made her suffer: "It doesn't matter, we can meet Monday. It's not so urgent." "I have five minutes to talk now, if that's convenient," I offered. "No, I think that's not enough time. It's best we wait til Monday." "Can you give me an idea what it's about?" I asked pleasantly. "I think it's best that we wait til Monday to discuss it." "All right. I'll have to check my schedule. Are you available Tuesday, in case I'm not free Monday?" "That should be alright too. Please let Rebecca know." I was genuinely curious about what we'd discuss. But it would have to wait. I went off on my bicycle to eat, drink, talk and sing with my students.
Monday, November 4, 3:00 PM. My phone rang. I happened to be working at home and I answered. It was Rebecca. "Hi," I said, wondering why she was calling. I'd called her Saturday to set the appointment for Tuesday at 3 PM. "Umm ... did we say Tuesday for the appointment?" she asked. "Yes," I answered, surprised. "Are you sure we didn't say Monday?" she asked plaintively. It was then that I looked at my watch and realized: through some unaccountable folly, Rebecca had gotten it wrong and told Wang Yan to expect me on Monday at 3:00 PM. Her Highness, for a second time, was being kept waiting for an audience that would not appear.
19. My GoalsSent: Monday, January 20, 2003 10:56 PMI assumed that what Wang Yan wanted to discuss was a situation that had arisen immediately before, on October 29, in one of my night school classes. Several people in my present abode in south China, hearing of my FAC troubles, have nodded their heads and told me that FAC students are not ordinary students -- their parents are Party officials. (If so, that was never very obvious while I was there.) However, that would not apply to the night school students. On the whole they were a slightly beaten-down bunch, weary from day jobs, occasionally arriving late to class when I knew they'd be on time if they could. They were also distinctly older, most in their late 20's or 30's. They'd previously acquired 2- or 3-year diplomas at colleges, some years earlier. They were in the first year of an upgrade program which would earn them Bachelor's degrees in English in 3 years. At this point, however, their English was abysmal -- markedly worse than any of my other classes. Some time into the semester I was hit by the realization that these poor students didn't even know each other. Each week, on two weeknights and on Saturdays, the same students met and sat together in their various classes (including mine); but most never saw each other outside class. Truly theirs was an impoverished academic experience. My toughest task in teaching was always to find good, short, snazzy, compelling, and generally appropriate readings. For my first class of night school, my more mature students, I'd chosen, before meeting them, a New Yorker piece that's so wonderful I present it here in its entirety:
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