My life in China, Part 6- Path to teaching

*Picture above is Dàbáilóu after it got its new red facade. When I was there, the building was white.

Well, for the most part, the worst is over. After the first few days of torture, the world that I hoped and dreamed about for the last few months comes to fruition. I can move from survival mode and start to experience China. I mean, what should I have expected? That it would all go smoothly? I was fresh out of college, with little world experience, traveling across the globe to live in a foreign country. Was that going to be easy? Hell no. There were bound to be some hick-ups. That’s why you enact such a plan in the first place, to have adventures and to learn.

School, researching, and watching documentaries are great for the theory, but sometimes you need to go out there and experience life to really learn about the world. You have to get dirty, hurt, suffer, feel stupid, feel awkward, and out of place. Those are the real lessons in life. They are the visceral teachings that become part of who you are, not just what you know. Could Hebei University have made the transition more comfortable and less life or death? Yes, but as I said before, now, as I look back at it, I’m glad they didn’t. I’m so thankful that nothing, and I really mean nothing, was comfortable or easy in China.

So, I’m finally settling in. I have money now, so those doors are open, and people are starting to filter back from their travels. I’m a shy person, especially back then, so by nature, it is not easy for me to make new friends, but again the experience is pushing me out of my comfort zone, and if I am going to survive here, I need to step out of my box. One of the first people I meet is a tall blond Englishman that moves in next door. We instantly hit it off. We are both new and completely inexperienced here, but as I arrived about a week before, I’ve learned a few things so that I can help a bit. Having a partner in crime changes everything, and we soon meet others.

During these first six months, Dàbáilóu’s restaurant becomes the most important place in my world. You could get superb food, good cold beer (because unlike most places in China, they know that us foreigners like our beer cold), and some stimulating discussion. All us foreigners ate around the same time, and the tables were large enough that we could all fit around one of them. It was always a joy to walk in, dust a bit of Baoding off our shoulders, and see who was there ready to share their day’s adventures. The little restaurant is where all the foreigners convened and had our council, examining the disparity of the culture we know and that of our host’s. Dàbáilóu was our restaurant. Being a bit hidden on campus, typically only us foreigners were there for dinner. We knew all the staff well, and they knew us. We knew the best dishes and the ones to avoid. We tended to have our favorites and could say to the others with authority that the Kung Pao Chicken or the Pineapple Pork was good that night.

Most importantly, we felt safe here. That isn’t to say China at the time was unsafe, far from it. Only a few times did I feel genuinely in danger (again future adventures). What I mean here is that we could be open and say what we wanted with each other. We could vent when the country chewed us up and spit us out, and we could examine, as outsiders, the differences that made living in China so exciting.

I would soon discover that it takes a strange and eclectic group of people to make China their home, but they were all super smart, friendly, and had great progressive ideas. Some of the most stimulating discussions I’ve ever had were sitting around those round tables in Dàbáilóu. Being a truly international group, all sorts of eye-opening opinions and theories swirled about lubricated by bottle after bottle of Blue Star Beer. I loved every minute of it. Sure, we argued and debated, but we also looked out for each other. We organized against the administration (which the university hated), we schemed, and we certainly got into our fair share of trouble. For those growing up in the democratic world, we could not accept certain things about living in China, and if it was safe to rebel, we unapologetically did so. It was almost like it was part of our teaching duties to instruct the university on the conventions found in the rest of the world. Did it all go smoothly? No. Did we get punished? Sometimes. Were their casualties? Certainly. But we were all adults, and often the university treated us like we were kids. It was, at times, infuriating.

Admittedly, the line between a foreign expert (fancy title for foreign language teacher) and an international student was hazy. I mean, there were Americans, Canadians, and British in the group who were the same age (or maybe even older) as me who were there only to learn Chinese. We lived in the same place and had much of the same experience. The university offered Chinese language classes to teachers for free, so we were often sitting in the same courses. Thus, the university got confused by the situation and treated all of us like we were students. At first, being a teacher seemed to be a much better deal, and some students lamented that they had gone the student path. I wasn’t teaching yet, so I agreed with them then, but after I started working, I saw the value of just focusing on the language.

So, it is the end of February, and I’ve settled in, mostly. I know all the other foreign teachers and some of the international students. I finally got my computer so that I can communicate with my family regularly. This was before China banned Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, English websites in general, and just about all instant messenger platforms. So, having internet was awesome. At this point, I’ve also discovered Yes Buy (a small convenience store on campus) and Dafuyuan (the local underground grocery store), so I’ve begun to acquire the essentials of life. I purchased a DVD player with some help and started to explore the pirated movie market. I’ve also started taking Chinese language courses, so I am learning a few useful words and phrases (I will discuss my ongoing language struggle in a future post). The last piece of the puzzle is teaching.

The semester officially starts March 1st, but I’ve heard nothing about what courses I would be teaching or how many. At the end of February, they even pay me for doing absolutely zip! It was bizarre. As a quick sideline here, getting paid was very strange. We were summoned to a room on the third floor with a thick steel door like a bank on the last Wednesday of the month. You would knock on the metal, and a slit would open. Seeing a foreigner face and not a group of bank robbers, they would open the vault and allow you entry. On the table was just a massive amount of RMB. They would then count out your salary, run it through an electronic counter, make a little check next to your name and then hand you a thick stack of cash in 100 RMB notes. It was probably not the safest way to distribute salaries. An industrious robber could easily set up shop down the hall and extort foreigner after foreigner’s worth of thick stacks of Chairman Maos.

Was I complaining about not teaching? Hell no. I’ve never taught a class in my life, and that unknown made it terrifying. I had bought all sorts of books on teaching English as a second language, but it was all theory. I didn’t know the first thing about putting together a curriculum or managing a classroom. For me, teaching was not why I was there. It was just a means of supporting my adventure. That would change, of course, but at this moment, I was happy just experiencing everything China had to offer.

A week into March goes by- silence. Then the second week. Still, no word. The veterans of the group have already started their classes. But for some reason, the Englishman and I are left waiting. We felt forgotten. I don’t know if it was because we came in the spring rather than the fall or what. Communication between the administration and the teachers was always lax. It almost felt like they were afraid of us, and anything to do with teaching was some sort of criminal enterprise. Any discussion with the administration was behind closed doors in near whispers full of platitudes and smiles. They would talk a lot, with nothing said. The most important thing was that everyone was happy, and no one lost face. If that meant nothing was discussed or solved, then so be it. I will also note that the administration was rarely in their office. If you needed help with anything, that wasn’t why they were there, apparently. If something required discussing, they would summon you. You couldn’t just go to their office with an issue. It was all incredibly strange and fortified the importance of us foreigners looking out for each other.

So, I’ve been in China for over a month. It had to be maybe the last week of March. It is 8 pm on a Friday, and someone knocks on my door. I assume it will be one of my new friends, but standing there is an unfamiliar Chinese student. They inform me my first class will be tomorrow. They hand me a textbook and give me the location and the time. I, of course, have a thousand questions, but they have no answers. Obviously, they are just the messenger. They do let me know that the students will be Hebei University faculty, hence the weekend course. I take the book and close the door.

Shit. What do I do now? It’s 8 pm, and less than 12 hours away, I will have a group of 30 Hebei University Faculty from their Management College to instruct. I flip through the book. It is probably the worst language textbook I’ve ever seen. Am I supposed to teach from this? It was for children and I would be facing a room of adults. I throw it on the bed. It will be of no help. Sure, with a group of unaware students, maybe I could wing it, but no, they had to give me a group of faculty- qualified teachers and professors that have years of experience under their belt. As soon as they see this red-cheeked kid before them, they will instantly know how green I am.

I barely sleep that night as I do my best to pull some sort of plan together, introductions mostly. I’m up early, make myself some tea (I never drank tea in my life, but when in Rome, or China in this case), and head to the class. The building is close by, maybe a 2-minute walk, and is one of the oldest teaching buildings on campus. It is just a concrete box with virtually no heat (this is March and still very much winter). It was a worn-out and outdated old structure built well before I was born- single-pane windows of wavy glass in peeling wood frames, cracked walls with flaking paint, fossilized benches, and desks, and floors slippery with an inch of chalk and Baoding dust. We’re talking about an artifact from before Communism. Hell, it may even be from before the Nationalists, when the Qing Dynasty was breathing its last breaths. I may sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. I’m fascinated. The building was a rare example of turn-of-the-century China. Sure, it was certainly not a state-of-the-art teaching facility, but I could make it work. I mean, what an experience to have! Sadly, the building is not there anymore. After I left China, it was torn down and replaced by some new-fangled monstrosity of progress. As the story continues, you will see that this building holds a special place in my heart, and I was saddened to see it gone when I returned ten years later.

Anyway, I walk into the room and step up onto the platform—the heat tinks through an ancient radiator, but I can still see my breath. I stand behind the podium before a large chalkboard and take it all in. I’m very early, so I have a moment to collect my thoughts. I place down my tea, notepad with my notes, and the terrible textbook. I turn and pick up a chalk piece, something I hadn’t done since probably elementary school, and write my name on the board. I stand back and look at my handiwork. It looks like someone let a chicken in the room. I never quite got the knack of being able to write beautifully on a chalkboard. It really is a skill.

I dust my hands off and wait for my new students to file in and begin another new adventure. Little did I know that this would mark a massive moment in my life. It was my first class ever, and I would make many new friendships that would last years. I would struggle and learn just as much as my students. But, most importantly, this would be the day that I would meet my future wife.

I will stop here for now as this post is getting long. Be sure to check back soon for the next part of the series as I stumble into teaching… and love!

Cheers.