Shanghai Symphony Spectacular

To continue the trend of doing everything that is available in the States that I never actually took advantage of, I went to the symphony Saturday night. The Shanghai Orchestra with the assistance of a European conductor, choir, pianist, and opera signers gave us a small reprieve from Peking Opera and mind-boggling contortionists as entertainment options.

Mozart began the evening, but his whimsical violin parts were pushed into an uncomfortable surround sound harmony with unexpected Chinese accompaniment. The sparkling of uncovered coughs popped up around the room like spring peepers on a hot summer day. As the music advanced, the coughs and sniffles were joined with the gentle snoring of the man next to us. At the apex the cellos and trumpets welcomed a new instrument to their menagerie: the crinkling chip bag smuggled into the theatre.

The unnecessary musical assistance abruptly concluded when Beethoven began since, quite obviously, the Coral Symphony was what people came to see. The man on one side of us stopped snoring and conducted along with the actual conductor. The man on the other side of us leaned forward in his chair to the point that his nose almost touched the seat in front of him.

Personally, I was riveted by yet another display of the marvels of Chinese engineering occurring onstage. A forty to fifty person choir, orchestra, conductor, grand piano, and six opera singers all managed to squeeze onto a stage smaller than my high school auditorium in a small country town in Ohio that’s biggest claim to fame is that Miss Junior Ohio 1995 came from our masses.

The pianist was phenomenal even if the only place to put her was right in front of the conductor, tottering dangerously close to the edge of the stage.

Another large surprise came at the end of the concert. While I’m pretty sure standing ovations are not often practiced in China, the audience will continue clapping until the conductor and opera singers return to take three additional bows.

My palms throbbed, and my arms tired, but the audience kept clapping. The experience was like some kind of sophisticated game of chicken, and I just couldn’t be the first one to stop cheering. The novel Chinese torture technique finally stopped when the theatre ended it for us by turning off the stage lights. I really hope the baritone did not take out a base as he was trying to find his way off stage.

The evening included incredible music and a few Shanghai surprises.

Urban Legends: Lessons Learned

The last day before the midterms, I wanted to give my students a little break. We spent most of the quarter talking about folklore so I thought I would step off the standard educational path of Paul Bunyan and talking animal tales and have a lesson on urban legends.

It turned out that my students were just as fascinated as I am about how urban legends spread and about the moral lessons people are suppose to gleam from unsuspecting college kids being terrorized by a serial killer.

I didn't actually include those types of urban legends in the activity. I changed a couple of stories so not to scare the students. One pleasantly naïve student commented, “The children were so smart to hide in the closet!”

I responded, “Yeah….they sure were,” since they certainly were not that smart in the original.

As we talked about the urban legends, a few students sat with their mouths wide open, enraptured. They were especially delighted when I told them about how many people do not get into their car without checking the backseat for a person hiding there or will not flash a car that does not have its headlights on because of urban legends. Suddenly they realized the power a story can have to change behavior.

A number of students ask to keep copies of the urban legends. I told the classes over and over again that the urban legends were just for fun and would not appear on the midterm.

A week later as I am grading one short answer question, I realize just how much my students took the urban legends to heart.

Question: 4. What is folklore? Why are many of these stories still popular and are retold today? Please use examples from stories and articles read in class in your answer.

Here are some of the responses:

1. “Folklore is fun and interesting and gives us lessons. For example, the stories “Check on the Children”, “The Mad Driver”, and “Harvest” tell us to take care of ourselves and always be aware of strangers.”

2. “These folktales are retold many times because these stories often teaches people a lesson like the article we read in class, “The Mad Driver”. It teaches us to be alert when going to drive a car and check your backseats before going in the car.”
(I like how she refers to the legend as an article.)

3. “A folklore is a story that is told to teach lessons. They are mostly untrue and usually a myth. The stories that are told today are still popular because they also teach lessons. These stories have a lot of meaning to it. Like in “The Harvest”. It reminds people not to accept drinks from strangers or you might have your kidneys sold to the black market.”

4. “Folklore warns kids not to do something dangerous by scaring them. Like the tale “Check on the Children”. The children could be safe if the babysitter didn’t spend 4 hours watching TV, by closing and locking the window, and making sure burglars didn’t come in.”

The lessons the students learned are:
• Always be vigilant for a homicidal maniac in your backseat
• Accepting a drink from a stranger WILL make you lose your kidneys to a black marketer
• While watching three hours of television is okay, watching four is certain to end in disaster

Lesson learned.

The McDonald's Delivery Man Myth

It started as a whisper, "Did you hear, McDonald's delivers in China."

All through autumn I never saw a trace in Shanghai of the McDonald’s Deliveryman and was convinced the he was a myth at the same level as the Lock Ness Monster and Bigfoot.

I finally witnessed my first drive-by Bid Mac in March. As I slipped out of the giant cast-iron gates that barricade our school from the rest of China, a slender motorized bike caught my eye. The bike was not unique; it was the standard ten-speed with a motor nailed on like the rest of the scooters in China. What caught my attention was the driver. He was decked in a bright red bike jacket and helmet containing the golden “M” that acts like a beacon to the French fries deprived.

A cherry-colored metal box was strapped on the back of the bike, which contained all the deep-fried goodness an American girl could possibly crave.

One of the foreign teachers in my school discovered the number of the local McDonald’s delivery. That information passed faster among the teachers than one of our students’ vicious rumors. Soon that noble McDonald’s Deliveryman was a common sight, zipping down the tree-lined brick walkways of our campus.

His increasing trips to campus peaked today when he greeted me every time I stepped out of my apartment.

In the morning I headed to the fabric market to finally put an end to the ongoing battle for my tailored jeans. The McDonald’s Deliveryman chugged passed me on the way to deliver breakfast to the teachers still fortified in their apartments against the windy spring day.

He nearly ran over my friend and I when we returned victorious around noon. We both chuckled and discussed the possibility of importing the exact havoc motorbikes model to the McDonalds in the United States.

Fearful that the typhoon-force winds would knock all the flowers off the trees, I trekked outside with my camera in the afternoon and ran into the McMan once again. This time I got photographic evidence of the legend in action although, like its peers in the Abominable Snowman and Lock Ness Monster cases, my picture was also blurry.

As I returned to my apartment, I found the Deliveryman stuck in an unintentional trap. The red box previously strapped to his bike, now rested on his back. While he could fit through one side of our apartment’s double glass doors, his satchel of steaming goodness could not. He was caught like a beetle flipped on its back. He flailed his arms, and he wiggled his body, but his hard-shell McDonald’s backpack wasn’t going anywhere. I had to open the second door to release him.

In the evening I went to dinner with a close friend’s parents vacationing in China. I walked through the near lightless campus at 10:30 expecting only the shadowy silhouettes of the uniformly planted trees for companionship. I only received a short beep of warning before The McDonald’s Deliveryman sped by me on the way to the foreign teachers’ apartments.

The McDonald Deliveryman…FACT
Bigfoot….To Be Determined

Math Madness

Four times a year, the school releases a tempest of stress and anxiety onto the student body known as exam week. This time around they had their second semester midterms.

The rituals and routines surrounding the midterm have kept me busy for weeks. I’ve written, proofread, wrangled with group members, sought approval, copied, stapled, and neatly written individual students names on the test. Now my work is done until the time comes to grade.

I’m not completely responsibility-free for the week of midterms because I have to proctor. The proctoring schedule is set completely on the whims of the administration with no consideration for expertise as illustrated by the fact that I was assigned the task of proctoring the very first test of the day: mathematics.

I am actually fairly competent in math. I took all the advanced math courses through high school, and I always easily received an “A”. College was another matter. While I took a number economics and statistics courses, I was not required to take a single math course. My algebraic equations are a little rusty to say the least.

My trepidation had merit:
1. While these students might hug their stuff animal pencil cases between classes and race up and down the hallways like they just discovered this miraculous game called tag, put a math problem in front of them and they become mini Grigory Perelmans, Bobby Fischers without the chess board, Henry Kissingers without the political intrigue… If they couldn’t find the answer, the likelihood is I won’t be able to either.
2. The kids were not allowed to use calculators! In high school I cradled my graphic calculator like a toddler’s blanket (though I never set my calculator on fire like I accidentally did my security blanket).
3. The students were taking two types of tests: The English geometry test and the Chinese test that I’m pretty sure was borderline trigonometry. Seeing a page full of numbers and random letters is intimidating enough without a bunch of Chinese characters thrown into the mix. My rudimentary literacy in Chinese characters does not include math terms.

I completely sympathized with one petite boy who was focusing so hard on a problem that his nose practically touched the table. His pencil scribbled furiously at the test. Suddenly, he shouted, “Yes!”

His answer checked out and was correct. I would have the exact same response though my voice would probably also contain an element of surprise.

I learned a few tidbits during the experience: China is going to continue to cream the United States in anything math related; fooling the students into thinking you understand the problem is as simple as reminding them of the directions for the section that they probably never read in the first place; geometry is still pretty fun; and I still really don’t like trigonometry.

The Wake Up Call

I was awoken terrified this morning by what could only be described as eerily similar to the presumed voice of the devil. This deep, sinister baritone ricocheted off the walls of my apartment, shouting commands in Chinese that I could not decipher because of the sheer volume.

The voice was not actually satanic but that of one of the local school’s gym teachers; however, when I’m unceremoniously plunged into consciousness, the culprit certainly feels demonic in nature.

The man who invades the sanctuary of my dreams each morning is responsible for waking the local school students up at 6:40am. I have the misfortune of living across the sidewalk from the boarders' dormitory for high school boys.

Given, high school boys are notoriously hard to wake, but the gym teachers already sound a fire alarm that is so loud I never have to set my resilient travel clock, which is daily flung across the room from the terror of the Chinese courtesy wake up call.

The converted air-raid siren must not have been satisfactory since halfway through the year additional bells and banging were added. I’m fairly convinced that the dorm chaperones walk along the open-air hallways ringing cowbells and pounding pots and pans.

In China all students have morning exercises at the precise same time. While the country is roughly the size of the United States, the only recognized time in China is Beijing time. In other words, time zones don’t exist.

The need to promptly wake the students is paramount, and today it must have also require the furious disturbance of one deep voiced man.

Even after the students were shell-shocked into alertness and the man ceased his barking, a new raucous kept me from falling asleep. The sound will be permanently branded into my mind: “YI! ER! YI! ER! HUUUUUUP!”

Repeat.

I glanced out my window to see the students slowly lifting and lowering their arms in time with the counting. I sighed knowing that I would not fall back asleep and jumped into the shower around the time the Chinese National Anthem came on over the loudspeakers.

I walked into the kitchen to make breakfast to the accompaniment of the students jogging in perfect lines passed my window as their “drill sergeant” for their morning ritual yelled what foot they should step with in English. The Chinese words for left and right do sound remarkably similar when screamed at auctioneer levels

The racket only ceases when I was alert and reading the morning news. I had peace for the next 45 minutes until I entered the jungles of the middle school, but even that diversity of sources of future hearing loss was short live for the ringleader that wakes me from my deep sleep will be back again tomorrow.

"Tell Teacher..."

I live in a telenovela… a very teen angst riddled one. The notes I confiscate and pieces of gossip that I overhear are better than any soap opera. The drama stirred up among the seventh grade girls could provide fodder for the CW for years.

Today was the last Friday before midterms so the already hyperactive students were turbo-charged with stress.

I handed each student a little slip with the book report poster grade as soon as they stepped into the class. Since their minds cannot absorb anything but the midterm, many students asked me if the poster went to their midterm grade. A majority considered their score as an omen to future performances. Everyone understood what the grade sheets were except one girl.

The slender pieces of paper look similar to the "Praise Notes presented for excellent academic behavior. When I handed the poster grade slip to the ultimate mega-generators of the seventh grade gossip machine, she gasped. "I got a praise note! I love you teacher."

"Actually, it's your grade for your poster."

The diva of melodrama's feigned excitement dropped immediately. "What! I hate you teacher!"

She stomped out of the classroom but stormed back in right as the bell rang. In her sweetest voice she said, “I’m sorry I said I hated you.”

Quite used to the emotional extremes of my students, I responded that while I’m glad she doesn’t hate me, her option of me does influence how I react.

She sucked in her breath with all the horror a twelve year old could muster. “That means you don’t care if I hate you are not!”

She marched to her seat with self-approved righteous indignation and immediately whispered to her friend. Though the friend was pained to be caught within the sandstorm of over-reaction, she turned to me with a grimace. “She wants me to tell you that she’s never going to speak to you again.”

I found myself weighing whether this was actually an unbeneficial development, but the drama magnet broke into my internal debate. She was determined to prove her point.

“Ask the teacher if she’s ever seen How To Lose A Guy in Ten Days.”
The friend repeated.

“Tell the teacher that I think the lead character is really pretty.”
The friend repeated.

“Ask the teacher if she knows who the lead is.”
The friend repeated.

“Tell the teacher that it’s Kate Hudson.”
The friend repeated.

We played jeopardy to review for the midterm, and the third person proxy continued. “Tell the teacher we want ‘Gerunds for 300’.”

The melodramatic student passed me later in the afternoon on her way to the buses with a different girl minion. With head held high she said to her friend, “Tell the teacher I hope she has a nice weekend.”

Though the rises and falls of the i-generation’s crises happen in an Internet inspired millisecond, I must be currently in the middle of a cold war.

The Unofficial License

Today two of my officemates and I were grading silently in our office. The students were scattered around the campus participating in their optional classes of robotics, drama, and model airplane building among others, which left the hallways in a rare stillness.

Suddenly, a car revved up and shattered our serenity. Technically, cars are not allowed on the narrow, brick sidewalks of our campus; however, that rule is broken more than followed. Parents and drivers race through the campus at the end of the day, making the students’ journey to the buses an elaborate game of chicken.

The revving happened again, but this time the sound was accompanied with the giggles and squealing shouts of middle school students. My fellow foreign teacher and I caught each other’s gaze and shared the same thought: Did the students steal one of the caretaker’s vans?

We lunged for the window. Sure enough, a group of our students surrounded a clown car sized van covered in the dents and rusty spots from previous hijackings. Thirteen-year-olds are dangerous enough with hairspray and textbooks yet alone a motor vehicle.

While my foreign teacher compatriot and I gaped in horrified disbelief, my Chinese officemate casually glanced out the window and informed us, “Oh, that’s just the optional driving class.”

Driving class…in seventh grade!

I scanned the students and rated the chances of each one taking out a primary school student as they zoom across the basketball court or the likelihood that the end of his fantastic journey will involve crashing into the library’s front window.

That one shreds or stains every homework assignment he ever turns in….
Chances: 5

That one is constantly ramming his friends into walls…
Chances: 7

That one can’t stay in his chair and has twice taken his desk and his neighbor down with him…
Chances: 10

I’m suddenly struck with the realization that the “Driving Class” might be an alternative to detention since many of these students are the ones most likely to spend their lunch period writing sentences.

As one student struggled to move the car from park to first gear, my Chinese officemate elaborated, “They are working on their unofficial license.”

Shanghai, where the official driving age is eighteen, has an unofficial license obtainable at thirteen! Well, that explains many of my horror-inducing taxi experiences.

I needed to walk over to the primary building so my officemate and I decided to brave the narrow paths of the grounds together. We eased out of the middle school, checking both directions. The van had vanished. Deciding to make a break for it, we scurried down the sidewalk towards the primary school. Out of nowhere the van whipped around a corner and stopped like a predator spotting its prey. My officemate and I froze. She leaned over slightly and whispered in my ear, “Do you think we should hide?”

“No, act casual.”

When we started moving again the van did as well. It flew towards us with no intention of slowing down. As I had no intention of stepping into that intersection, I jolted to a stop.

As the van zoomed past us, an arm burst from the back window, “HI TEACHER!”

Good! The kids in the death-mobile are the ones that actually like me; Death-By-Thirteen-Year-Old-And-Van will not part of my obituary. We hurried on our way, but I risked one more look back at the vehicle. The van tailed a kitchen worker on a three-wheel bicycle as he furiously pedaled for his life.

I’m not a fan of the cafeteria food either.

China Courier Challenge

I long ago accepted that performing mundane tasks in China requires two steps more than in the United States. Bank trips easily take an hour, and I would potentially prefer catching the bubonic plague than entering the post office to send a package home.

One of the most heinous of all chores is waiting for the bike courier outside the massive gates of the school. While I have heard rumors that e-tickets are now available in China, I have yet to experience that wonder of modernity. My trip preparation involves collecting an overflowing envelop of the pink 100 Yuan bills and wait for a random man on a beat-up bike with a helmet and a fanny pack containing my plane ticket or whatever item that I blindly believed would pedal up to my door. Last week that exchange involved a painfully bursting envelop of cash for a partially translucent receipt that vaguely promised a deposit for a Yangtze River Cruise this summer. In essence the slip said, “I O U one Yangtze River Cruise”.

I have diligently awaited the arrival of the bike courier through the drenching rains and umbrella torturing winds of typhoons (Typhoon Wipa to be exact) and the smoky fog from hundreds of farmers outside Shanghai burning the stubs of their harvested crops.

In fact, whenever I schedule to meet a courier is when Shanghai is hit with freakish weather that is rarely forecasted and almost always guaranteed to soak my tickets before I’m able to transport them back to the safety of my apartment. Last night certainly did not break my pattern of courier challenges.

I miss the thunderstorms of my home state, but I don’t want the first one I’ve seen after seven months in China to be while I’m standing along the street, carrying a flimsy travel umbrella like yesterday. I was waiting for my custom-made jeans to be delivered from my previous Fabric Market Extravaganza. When I went to collect them last week, the tailor apologetically informed me that his boss ripped up my order so he will deliver the jeans later in the week.

Students and school workers trickled out of the gate while I clinch the money tightly. I felt like I was involved in some sort of illicit transaction. I was the sketchy foreigner hovering outside the schoolyard with a bag full of money, waiting for a complete stranger to deliver the goods.

I tried to make eye contact with every cyclist on the street since I’ve learned that if the biker acknowledges me, he’s probably the guy with the fanny pack of treasure. Unfortunately, bicycles are, categorically, the most popular form of transportation in China. Dozens of bicyclers zoomed passed me with cheap rain parkas billowing out behind them in streaks of yellow, blue, and green.

I waited thirty minutes until my friends met me for dinner. I attempted to leave my money with the guard for when the courier did actually appear. That point of the evening is when I received a street Chinese language lesson; “wait” cannot be combined with “delivery”. Nothing is dreaded more in China than when a native speaker says, “Ting Bu Dong”, which roughly translates to, “I don’t understand what you are saying.” That phrase is what I say on a regular basis, but to hear it back causes a mind scramble to be understood, which reminds me of those moments of panic at trying to figure out answers quickly during math Around-The-World games.

My effort was all for nothing. When I returned to the school after an enjoyable cheeseburger dinner in one of the western districts, my envelop of money was still sitting in the guard’s building, more than slightly crinkled and travel-worn. Now I have one more extra step in China; I must call my tailor today to ‘discuss’ his failed delivery.

Boys Vs Girls Mountain Climbing

For no apparent reason my travel companions in China have been exclusively girls. We have witnessed odd behavior along the banks of the Li River, trekked through ancient ruins in Cambodia, and survived insane tuktuk rides in Thailand. All while we conversed at lighting speed and debated the merits of “The Rules”.

Last weekend was the Chinese Tomb Sweeping Festival, and like every week when we receive a day off, my friends and I fled Shanghai. This time we journeyed to Huangshan, one of the sacred peaks of China. Uniquely, among our traveling fellowship were two guy friends. Before we even left the airport, the disparities of traveling with guys became readily apparent.

For the sake of anonymity, I will refer to the guys as Laurel and Hardy

1. Vital Documents
Girls: Not only do we check and double-check all documents and important papers, we remind each other to the point of annoyance. We guard passports with the maternal instincts of a lone lioness among hyenas.

Boys: The female traveler who is responsible for the plane tickets only relinquishes control when absolutely necessary right before the security checkpoint. Barely a moment after that exchange occurred last weekend, Laurel dove into the trash bin to retrieve the boarding pass he just threw away among the egg shells and used tissues. He mistook which hand held his ticket and which the trash.

Twenty minutes later, Hardy’s name was called over the airport's loudspeaker. He left his boarding pass AND his passport on the countertop in the bathroom.

2. Incentives
Girls: A few days before we left for Huangshan, we went on an expedition to the international grocery store to stock up the subsidence that we would need to trek up the mountain. We were strategic in our purchases and held up different snacks as we debated the weight, likelihood of surviving in a book bag for eight hours, and nutritional content. We even bought a Capri- Sonne for each trekker as a rare treat.

Boys: The boys finished their precious Capri-Sonnes before we even left for the airport.

Driven to compassion after seeing porter after porter draped in everything from drywall to eggs on the mountain, Hardy decided to lighten one man’s load. No, he didn’t carry the porter’s cargo for him; Hardy bought one of the beers that crowned the top of the porter's pile of commodities.

3. Packing
Girls: Since we hauled our own luggage up the mountain, we limited our packing to those essentials needed for survival and basic hygiene. We conferred and debated the merits of each inclusion in person and online during the week leading up to packing.

Boys: For the boys the list of essentials included the most recent electronic toys and gadgets. Laurel might be the only person to hike up Huangshan with an I-pod Touch.

4. Late-Night Manic Activities
Girls: After spending all day hiking through the fog and pushing meandering Chinese tourists out of the way, the girls headed to bed. The knowledge that watching the sunrise required waking up at 4:30 drove us to attempt an early night.

Boys: After taking a night hike….on top of a mountain…in a heavy fog…with very few if any security devices like railings….with only my mini maglite to see by, Hardy, in a manic state, decided to enter the extreme of late-night activities. He built a “Fortress of Solitude” out of everything readily available in his hotel room including: chairs, blankets, lights, and strategically placed coat hangers. The effort took him well into the evening though he somehow was still full of energy the next morning when he bursted into our rooms shouting, “Come see my Fortress of Solitude!” (For the girls out there scratching their heads, the fort is a Superman reference.)

5. Emergencies
Girls: If an injury occurs among our ranks, the ones not cringing in pain warp into modern Florence Nightingales. They fuss over the tiniest splinter or scrap. A man burnt me with his lit cigarette even though signs were posted everywhere that smoking was forbidden in the natural area. My girl friends showered me with first aid attention, offered me cold water to pour on the wound, checked for blister formation, and assisted me with the proper way to apply the band-aid to allow the wound to breathe.

Boys: After glancing over to confirm that my finger was not about to fall off and that my current malady would not slow their progress down the mountain, they wondered off in search for something to entertain themselves while the girls set up an impromptu triage on top of the mountain.

6. Witness Responsibilities
Girls: Girls abide by that all-important Understood Rule. If one of their cohorts collapses into idiocy or suffers embarrassing gravity malfunction, the victim will be playfully teased but never in mixed company

Boys: Equipped with a camcorder, the boys were prepared to capture every momentary lapse in intelligence or coordination, inserting funny commentary and guaranteeing that strangers and future generations could mock the sufferer as well. When I stepped off the path to make room for a porter and fell unceremoniously on my backside, Laurel was right behind me to capture the moment, which included the collective gasps of the forty Chinese vacationers who witnessed.


Though sore and tired, we successfully journeyed up and down the mountain, capturing some lasting memories in the process. Even more astonishing, we accomplished it all with two guys in tow.