Show Time

I'm a Cult of Personality

Leo is a very confident 6 year old and is used to speaking in front of a thousand kids.

Tiger Mothers' Kids

Click the pix for larger picture.

On January 2 the schools I work for had what they refer to as a "group activity" for the children from all of our three schools. About 1,000 kids showed up at one of the big parks for this grand affair. They were divided by school and classroom and were all cute and atwitter in their uniforms. There were a few speeches and such from teachers, headmasters, foreign teachers and very bright students. All the while the kids stood in a formation that, while lacking in military precision and discipline, was still impressive for 3 to 6 year olds.

My teaching partner and I got them to holler "Good morning!", and "I"m fine, thank you!", and I got an inkling of what Hu Jintao must feel like when he comes out for some quality public time.

The kids had been rehearsing some dance moves and songs prior to the event, and they were led by teachers from up on the stage. The whole crowd moved, sang and danced somewhat in unison. The Chinese can really get a crowd performing in a pretty good way, even rugrats. It's a pleasant change from the chaotic crowds and traffic one experiences in a day to day basis.

Then the kids were treated to a Professional Fun Guy and his staff of fun folks. They did dances, songs, and games, or rather the younger staff did the movements, while PFG, who was a little rotund, was middle aged and had smoker's voice, did the commands.

Then their parents were called out to join the kids and the real fun began. They all got these big colored, inflatable vinyl weenies that they used in all manner of directed games. Everyone was laughing and having way more fun than would have been allowed 30 years ago. The entire Professional Fun show lasted about 90 minutes and was a remarkable experience for all, and great publicity for the schools. Things here are done on a massive scale, and that can include fun.

Christmas Show

We have our cast.

Glee!

Frosty and Brian the World's Tallest Elf

Snow White and the Seven Tall Dwarfs

Frosty has treats!

He sees you when you're sleeping...

Don't kill Santa!

Merry Christmas!

Click the pix for larger picture.

Our new school will be opening in the middle of February. A lot of money has been sunk into remodeling an old government building to make a state of the art school where preschool kids get a strong foundation of skills to groom them for the rigors of the Chinese school system.

During the month of December we worked to promote the school with lots of publicity and some big events. Since it is an "international school", they wanted us to have a Christmas show.

First, we needed to decorate the school. Since Christmas is as alien to these folks as Chinese New Year is to Americans, they needed a crash course in what decorations to use. Fortunately, there is a street in our city where the shopkeepers have all loaded up on Christmas goodies. We took a group down to that street and had a heyday shopping. Once we had acquired a wealth of goodies, the teaching and administrative staff did a fine job decorating.

A talent search was conducted at one of our other kindergartens for kids who could sing, speak English, and who possessed the attention spans required to rehearse for long periods of time.

The show consisted of many shows and some games. There was a play of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", although the entire cast was pretty much dwarf sized. I read the "Night Before Christmas" with our teenage British friend who translated it into his excellent Mandarin. There was a traditional British family Christmas sketch, Frosty the Snowman, and several cute songs by the kids. I made a fool of myself as Santa Claus, with my son as the "World's Tallest Elf" and we did a duet of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

The crowd was stoked. We then took our large bag of goodies to distribute and things got a bit sketchy. Chinese people do not politely queue up for anything. They crowd, and cut in and basically act like a bunch of American shoppers on Black Friday, sans pepper spray and tasers. This crowd was worse than some. I felt like a UN relief worker handing out food in Darfur. My Chinese assistant kept saying "move forward". Like one guy in a Santa suit was going to make headway through a couple of hundred parents and kids all vying for candy and mini teddy bears. When we ran out, I had a momentary sense of panic, but miraculously the crowd receded and we were able to gracefully exit to have our pictures taken by parents while posing with their cute rugrats.

It was a fun, successful event. We brought a bit of western culture to the Far East, and we introduced a new day on which children here can harass their parents for gifts.

Changes

Since my blogging has been lagging lately I guess I have some ‘splaining to do. I actually have been very busy, but also my life has experienced a bit of an upheaval. Without going into great personal detail inappropriate to such a public venue as a blog, I’ll just say that I am now divorced and had to move to a new place. It was no fun.

I’m OK, though. I intend to stay here in China and work. I also will blog more. Really.

Our new apartment is in a less upscale neighborhood next to a middle school and we are surrounded by teachers and retired teachers. It’s much quieter, and there is a great pianist nearby who gives us lots of lovely music.

Our old place, although in a hi tone neighborhood, was in an older complex. The ground floor garages had been converted to small apartments that were occupied primarily by large extended families of what the locals refer to as “countryside people”. These peasant yahoos have a different type of lifestyle than the other city folk here. They spend much time outside their overcrowded abodes speaking in a tone that could best be described as hollering. They had an old motorbike with a bad muffler, and rambunctious kids who like to play loudly at nap time. They always comforted their screaming babies outside and kept chickens and roosters. I hate roosters, especially at 5 am on my day off. Good riddance, peasants!

The Best Kind of Roosters

Back from the Shadows

“This bus driver has the driving technique of a meth crazed ferret”—Phone message from me to a friend.

It's been an awfully long time since I've posted anything here. I have plenty of excuses, and quite a number of good ones, but I'll save those for some other time.

I seem to still spend a lot of time on buses, and I send a lot of messages to friends recounting my reactions to the very weird stuff I see and experience.

I recently read that Steve Martin was doing a book of his tweets, I wondered if I could do something similar, which I could- if my name was Steve Martin and people were willing to pay to read any random thought that came into my head.

I do have a decent hand held device, and there is nothing like a Chinese bus stuck in rush hour traffic to inspire some keen observations.

I've been bouncing around to the various kindergartens that my employer owns, teaching rudimentary English to very cute children. The schools are much nicer than those I have been in my various teaching gigs. They are cleaner, and have a good staff to child ratio. Child safety is a top priority, and there is ample love in the institutions.

I have piled onto my regular schedule an ungodly amount of extra work so that my 'weekend' consists of Sunday afternoon and evening. However, my regular schedule isn't half bad. I am scheduled at one of 3 schools at 7:30 Monday through Friday. For half an hour I stand at the gate with other teachers to greet the kids. This is one of the highlights of my day. Then I have breakfast with some of the staff, which consists of porridge, noodles, or steamed buns, the same stuff the kids eat. It's not very exciting, but it has failed to make me fat or ill. I then cool my heels, doing lesson plans or reading until 9 am when I do two half hour classes. I am then finished until 3:45 pm when I return for two more 30 minute classes, followed by a short break. I then spend half an hour, between 5 and 5:30 saying goodbye. All in all it's an hour a day as a Wal Mart greeter for rugrats and 2 hours of class time. It also gives me a big fat midday break, so I can chill and rest up because I have night classes, and a 9 hour of classes Saturday. All of the extra lessons come from the fact that I have a good reputation and am in big demand. I did not seek out this work. It found me. I turn down jobs on a weekly basis. If a decent, qualified teacher came here, I could have them working full time next month.

Help wanted.

Must be willing to relocate to an alien place where most familiar things are non existent. (There is the possibility that some things may vaguely resemble something you might recognize.) Must be incredibly flexible or your head will explode. Patience is mandatory. Quick wits and reflexes a must. Must be willing to try anything. Love of kids and ability to pull a spontaneous lesson out of thin air is required. Also should have a high degree of tolerance for crowds, queue cutters, litterers, spitters, horns, bad internet, noise, squatty potties and being stared at. Helpful if you like constant surprises and weirdness.

The pay allows you to live in a very comfortable lifestyle, yet keeps you in a low tax bracket.

Control those Urges

Click the pix for larger picture.

Besides having the government dictating the number of kids a family can have, there are other institutional and cultural forces that combine to keep unbridled breeding from taking place. For example, the schools implement many policies, whether intentional or not that place many impediments in the way of youthful libidos.
The following article about school uniforms is an interesting case in point:

Controversial Uniform Change

Parental pressure has forced a technical school in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, to give up its plan of changing its uniforms, fashioned after South Korean uniforms where it's trouser suits for boys and skirt suits for girls. It would seem that parents object to the new uniforms for being too provocative.

On January 15, a parent surnamed Cheng contacted the Jinling Evening Paper to inform them of the school's plan. Ms Cheng explained that her daughter, who is enrolled at the school, was really excited about it. But Ms Cheng didn't share her daughter's enthusiasm. "I am afraid that my daughter will fall in love too early if the school adopts the Korean style school uniform.

"My daughter told me that her school was going to purchase new uniforms -- Korean style with suits for boys and skirts for girls. My daughter not only said that wearing a skirt to school was her dream, but also starting discussing with her classmates which boy would look the most handsome in the new suit."

Ms Cheng added, "My daughter would be staring at boys all day if the Korean style uniform is adopted. These are adolescents. Uniforms will only make the opposite sex even more attractive to them during this very sensitive time. The sports-styled uniforms are better -- healthy and active."

A Mr Lin, an official with the school administration, told the Jinling Evening Paper, " Our uniforms are basically sports attire consisting of a tracksuit. The same design for boys and girls except for color. Students don't like them at all, and some parents think it's a waste of money.

"That's why we considered changing the uniforms last November. We polled the students for their opinions and found out that most of them liked the uniforms typically worn by children in South Korea and Japan. In China, too, some middle schools in Shanghai and Guangzhou have changed their uniforms."

in response to concerns that students would "fall in love too early", Lin agreed that the new uniforms are a lot more appealing than the sports attire.

However, the plan was canceled because too many parents were against it. According to Lin, some parents accused the school of trying to raise more money through the new uniforms, while others raised concerns such as girls catching colds in skirts, and the new uniforms posing a distraction from studies because they're too provocative.

The middle school I taught in has some interesting uniforms. Depending on which class you are in, you have several options. First is the royal blue polyester track suit. This had the advantage of being both hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
There are also the girl's white warm weather tops that had giant collars and were copied from a 1969 McCall's maternity smock pattern. These can be worn with the sweat pants, or equally fashion challenged polyester pants.
The least odious is the white polo shirt worn by both genders for that androgynous look, topped with a royal blue polyester unlined sport coat.
Hair must be short, shorter on boys.
There are efforts at individuality, cool glasses, shoes, watches, and layered winter wear being the primary fashion efforts. The effect was subtle.
If the school's intentions were to create a student body that appeared to be a mass of brainy dorks, then they can be said to be a smashing success.

After doing all they can to eradicate any vestiges of coolness, they then provide an environment that virtually eliminates any free time by filling in most waking hours with classes and study halls. They then pile on enough homework to encroach on sleeping and eating times, and create enough academic pressure to cool even the most ardent passions.

Throw in a complete lack of dances or any other opportunities for young men and women to get intimate, and you have succeeded in putting a major dent in something that many western countries struggle with--teen pregnancy.

One Family, One Child

Vice President Biden was recently in China making pals with his Chinese counterpart, watching some basketball, and doing what he does best-yacking. During one of his windy exhortations, he made a comment about China's one child policy. I don't remember what exactly he said, and don't feel like looking it up, but it brought much hand wringing, hollering, clarifying, and general hoopla regarding the fact that he did not condemn, in no uncertain terms, this policy.

Upon arriving in China, the foreigner has many thoughts. I am not a mind reader, but I can be absolutely certain that the first thought that comes into their head, upon arriving, is not, "Say, this place could use some more people!" China has over 1.3 billion people. That is one billion more people than the United States. It has also experienced famine and poverty on a massive scale. I have heard accounts of cannibalism and babies abandoned in the forests because there was no food.

The population of the world is growing dramatically, and resources are becoming scarce. There is, and there will be famine, wars, and pandemics as a result of this. China's leaders recognized that their country was not capable of supporting the kind of population growth that Chinese culture is capable of producing, and enacted laws to control the birth rate.

Most Chinese couples are allowed to have only one child. There are exceptions. Farming families can have more than one child. Twins are OK. If your child dies, you can have another. If a couple are both single children, they can have two kids.

If you have a second child, and work for the government, or a government connected business you will lose your job. Other businesses might well fire you too. If you are self employed, as many people are, you can just pay the fine for another kid. At present, it's 30,000 RMB, too much for most people, but not for upper middle class folks. There are countless ways for people to cheat the system, and it happens fairly often, but the overall result is that the birth rate has slowed, and is no longer out of control.

There are many downsides to this program. There are forced abortions, forced birth control, and child abductions. There is a gender disparity in that there are more male kids than female. This is due to the illegal practice of gender selective abortions. There is also a concern among Westerners that there will be a great burden on the younger generation because they will have to support more elderly people. I think this is a bit overblown, since Chinese are generally very frugal and have a lot of money saved. They can save even more for retirement, since they are raising fewer children.

If China's population had continued to grow at the rate it was going, there would be more poverty, more pollution, and a lot less prosperity to go around. You would not see the same successes that you have today.

It's easy for Americans, with their wide open spaces, clean air, and cushy lifestyles to criticize the one child policy. But the future of the planet will be greatly impacted by the out of control population growth that is happening in the Third World. It cannot be sustained. The measures that China has taken will seem very humane compared to the alternatives.