In December, I and the other ETAs were sent to Luzhou Technical School to conduct our mainland teaching attachment, after an initial four day stay in Nanjing. Our time in Nanjing was spent learning about our funding partners mission at their headquarters there. Amity, the organization sponsoring our mainland trip, places native English teachers at rural colleges sprinkled throughout China's backwoods. Though to be precise, there are some areas of rural China that are too poor, and too jarring a contrast to what the Communist party would like westerners to think of China (that is modern and increasingly well off) to allow foreigners to enter.
Amity is an organization that balances the precarious bridge between being a Christian organization carrying out government work. This is especially delicate work because the Chinese government tightly controls the practice of religion. This means that there is no proselization, one of the core concepts of Christianity. Amity maintains the government’s good favor by providing social services the government cannot or will not provide for free. For example, after the Sichuan earthquake, they were one of the first organizations on the ground providing aid.
In keeping with their mission, they print Bibles in Nanjing. It was a strange event: visiting a Bible printing press in mainland China is not what I would have envisioned myself doing! After hearing endless talk about China's increasing industrialization it was interesting to see a factory in person. For factories in China, I was told that this one was on the "excellent" end of the working conditions spectrum. Lighting was good, the factory floor was spacious and the pay is decent--this last admittedly based on hearsay and the manager giving the tour. While a seemingly random addition to our mainland excursion the Bible printing plant was impressive: through them Amity prints Bibles in Swahili, Russian and English.
In Nanjing we also visited a government school for autistic children. While we did not interact with the children, we did observe them with their teachers. They receive one-on-one attention with the intent of breaking through the social isolation that characterizes autism. Having a child with autism is even more painful in China than it is in the US, because under the one-child policy, that is the only child a family is allowed to have. That a parents only child be mentally handicapped is especially painful, and often considered shameful, for a family. Teachers involve parents and grandparents in the childs therapy to try and break through these family tensions.
Our other major visit in Nanjing was the Nanjing Massacre Museum. Its title indicates the solemnity of the site. In 1937, the Japanese army massacred anywhere from 30,000 to 200,000 civilians in Nanjing, sweeping in after crushing the Chinese nationalists in Shanghai. Though the museum attributed this cruelty to the absence of conscience among the "Japanese devils," the massacre was most probably also due to the Japanese army venting their anger and frustration after the long battle for Shanghai on the unwitting city of Nanjing.
Even with the knowledge that crimes are committed during war that would be otherwise unimaginable; the atrocities committed at Nanjing were horrific. There is a well known photo which depicts a beheaded man, his head propped on a fence post with a cigarette stuck in his mouth. This example of "humor," in the eyes of Japanese soldiers, encompasses the enormity of the massacre and the deeds carried out. Seeing pictures of women and young girls who had been raped and sometimes killed by the soldiers, and then walking on a carefully carved pathway through a field where hundreds of the victims were buried, I understood why the Chinese people find it so difficult to let go of this vicious crime.
After our thoughtful time in Nanjing, we flew to Sichuan province in southwest China to begin our teaching. We landed in Chengdu, the capital of the province, where the bare bones airport and the Communist guard in green uniform led me to feel that I was finally entering the real China. Driving from Chengdu to Luzhou City, our ultimate destination, I watched a world I had only imagine unfurl. There were flashes of antiquated scenes: run down houses mad of mud and stone, people walking along the raised ditches bordering their fields, women stopping to chat while bundled in the traditional Chinese straight jacket and trousers. Arriving at Luzhou Technical School was another surprise—a striking contrast to the Hong Kong Instittue of Education. Instead of pavement there was a dirt track, instead of a sports field there was mud. Some of the students live in meager conditions. In the cheapest housing at the school, male students are placed ten to a room with no indoor heating or plumbing. Even the girls’ room I visited, which was considered the mid tier of housing, consisted of eight girls in one room sharing one bathroom. My housing, which was superior in contrast, consisted of a heat lamp (to serve in place of indoor heating) and a miniscule bathroom where the shower head was above the toilette. Having a western style toilette we considered ourselves lucky- most of the toilettes in Luzhou were “squatties,” an informal term for a hole in the ground.
While living standards in Luzhou are low, we were so warmly greeted that I sometimes yearned for obscurity. The night we arrived we had dinner with the school president, in which he came around and toasted each of us individually. To show our appreciation of his welcome we were to down a shot of the burning liqueur Luzhou is famous for. This process was then repeated about four times by various other school administrators. I saved myself from a hangover and certain sickness by pretending to sip at the liqueur each time we were toasted. Though this was unique to our time, a fairly common event was walking down a street and having echoes of “Hello!” follow me. While students and adults seemed to fear greeting me directly, they had no such fear once I had passed them by!
My students, both at Luzhou Technical School and those at the local elementary schools, were delighted with me. When I gave presentations about American family life, sharing pictures of my family and friends, there were endless exclamations of “So beautiful!” This became something of a running joke among I and the other ETAs; by the end of our trip I’m sure we heard it at least one hundred times each. And when I visited the local elementary schools I was mobbed by little children wanting my autograph, wanting to say hello, or wanting to take a picture with me! At the elementary school after my class was done the students rushed me, dumping presidents of candy, and flowers into my lap, all the while excitedly shouting out “Hello! Hello!”
While the constant attention got tiring, Luzhou was a very valuable experience. Leaving Luzhou I sensed what I have always heard but never really believed, that life is unfair. By the mere fact of being born in America I have had the opportunity for education and advancement that the children and young men and women in Luzhou never had. It is still difficult to accept that no matter how smart or how hard those children work, most will probably never leave Luzhou.
Returning to Hong Kong this semester I appreciate that while the students here need help they are so much more cosmopolitan and have access to so much better English resources than their counterparts in Luzhou, which stands as an example of thousands of small cities across China. While some of the students where I teach at the Hong Kong Institute of Education struggle with their language, they were sophisticated speakers in contrast to my mainland students. The university students had difficulty recognizing simple phrases like "where are you from?" or "how old are you?" and the elementary students were tragic. When I introduced myself to the elementary students in Luzhou they stared blankly back at me, parroting back “Good morning, how are you?” Learning by rote memorization, which is a major feature of most Chinese classrooms, is obviously not working.
I guess I now appreciate my wife's ability to have been able to leave Luzhou on her own.