Teaching

When you read through fieldnote after fieldnote, listen to interview after interview, transcribe recording after recording, one begins to understand how much drudgery qualitative research can be. Several questions plague me during these long hours:
1. What's the significance of this all?
2. You don't have statistics or a representative, random sample... how does this show anything on a larger scale (generalizability)? What are your measures of validity (e.g. statistics has agreed statistical boundaries)?
3. IS IT WORTH IT?

My answers so far run on these lines:

1. I can write a whole lot on a report that sounds great. I can justify my research by explaining how it helps develop better pedagogy for migrants. It helps us contextualize, prepare, develop, strengthen, augment... While I don't think it's hypocritical, I've come to take the significance portion of every research proposal, every award ceremony, and every biography with a grain of salt.

At least in the field of education, the significance of each piece of the puzzle that fits to make these institutions tick is simultaneously minuscule and crucial.

2. This question has been fielded several times as I've read through most of the literature on migrants. Some branches of sociology, economics, and other statistically based social sciences have the lion's share of academic knowledge in China's migrant sphere. In China, science reigns supreme: throttling toward a hazy modernity, it is indeed "science" that sends rockets into space, saves the environment, and structure a harmonious society. The "soft" and "thick" (to use Geertz' word) ethnographic realm is simply too fuzzy. I'm not in the least surprised that good ethnographies have yet to define policies in China. But change those into numbers, and you have a whole fund under your control.

I believe there are two reasons: qualitative data seems to lack generalizability and validity. How can one school shed light on a whole city, much less a nation? How can twelve students' opinions (note: opinion) be valid, much less generalizable?

On the other hand, stories have been humanity's primary mode of communication for centuries. In some ways, we've surrounded our lives in "webs of meaning" based on the thousands of stories we've learned and listened to. The scops of Anglo-Saxon lore weren't talking about confidence intervals, The Venerable Bede doesn't tell you about the normal distribution of singers, the poets of China surely weren't telling us about student-t tests. Not to dismiss statistics, however: surely some of the most powerful civilizations ran censuses and reigned over the nation with statistical and mathematical tools (look at the genealogies in the Bible, for example). I believe few individuals are innately drawn to statistics as a tool of communication, however. Stories are passed down through the centuries: the Gospels are stories of Christ; the Bhagavad-Gita chronicles the *story* of Arjuna; the stories of Mohammad, Buddha, Abraham Lincoln (not to imply these figures are the same!) continues to this day.

Whether true or untrue, a story communicates so well because it opens itself toward interpretation. It intrinsically asks the reader to internalize, to ponder, to place the story within the framework of his or her own life. For example, one easily walks away from Miller's Crucible with different thoughts, each individual thinking differently about the story. It is nebulous, uncertain, and perhaps in the stereotyped, contemporary Chinese mind, unscientific.

Does my work have validity? It really depends, I suppose. On a superficial level, clearly I can honestly record events that occurred, providing as much detail as possible, and clearly state my methodology. These types of historical, for lack of a better word, validity are agreed in the field. For example, the story of Christ has good historical validity.

On a deeper level, however, is whether it actually answers the questions it originally attempted to answer. In attempting to understand how students develop their perceptions of education, I believe understanding their lives through stories is a more valid analytical tool. I doubt many would deny that students develop their ontological framework mostly through stories, especially while they are young. Understanding the stories of their lives, their experiences, their social networks... these are more suited toward developing a perspective of their education. To funnel these questions into a statistical framework may increase its generalizability, but probably not its validity (e.g. how you can say that this set of questions provides a perspective into the students' mind?).

Does my work have generalizability? Probably not in the statistical sense. But like a good story, it offers the kind of affinity one feels toward, say, Proctor, or Willy Loman. In being so focused, it offers a picture of humanity with all of its crazed complexity. That said, I agree that the scale of implementation of a policy must follow its level of generalizability. For a *social scale,* ethnographic data cannot be used alone. It must be paired with a good statistical study. But the reverse ought to be true as well.

I think this picture illustrates the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research quite well. In tackling a frustratingly complicated ("rocky") area, we must use one method. In tackling a relatively uniform area, we can use another. To bridge the two in a synergistic fashion allows for the most validity and generalizability, however.


3. At the end of the day it really is about the students. At 5:40 in the morning, pulling myself out of bed to run with the students, I am grouchy, angry, and for the past few days aching and sick. I want to rip something apart and sleep for hours. But nonetheless, there's a drive the forces me to continue. Whether working as a teacher, a volunteer, or a researcher, the core goal in my being at this school really is the students. It's not that they are impoverished and lacking in opportunities (well, that's true too), it's really about growth, and wanting to understand and implement the most effective way to help these students grow. Anything toward that end, I think, is "worth it." Plus the added bonus of being called "teacher" all the time, in spite of my embarrassment.

After reading China Road (Gifford), I've been enthralled with the idea of roads. At first my whole experience was about walking a road less taken. I've come to believe that it shouldn't even be about myself at all, because all that will remain on this road (my whole life, actually) is my "shadow." The important part is rather to serve those who live here and grapple with a difficult road on a day to day basis.

Grittiness

A little grittiness isn’t a bad thing… once you’re used to it.

Walking across the paved one-lane road (but acting as a two-lane road), I dodge several incoming vehicles and a horse cart before safely breathing the noxious fumes of gasoline and burnt charcoal on the other side (how ironic). A steel frame stretches over this open mouth of a road, the words 寿宝庄 written on it. A vendor sells fruit, shielded from the dust by a few umbrellas boasting the words ‘Lenovo.’

To my right is the public bathroom, an inconspicuous concrete building with broken concrete tiles outside. Further along the road is a bathing facility and a local police station.

Sand and dust rises from the air, mixing with the pungent smoke swirling mischievously from a small stove. Taking the lid off a tower of wooden containers, steam from the newly made buns rises to join the smoke. A splash of water catches my attention, and I notice several fish swimming desperately in a tiny concrete pond. The owner fetches one with a net hanging from a stick and hands it, still flipping, to a customer.

A cigarette hangs precariously from the mouth of a worker shoveling gray-yellow sand from a pile the height of his waist onto a small frame, which acts as a filter. Caked with sand and bits of cement, bricks are piled in stacks that remind me of a game of Jenga. The whole community glows from the vibrant shade of orange dye that permeates the cloth sky, a bright glow in the west fading gently light blue in the east.


Bicycles vie for space with pedestrians and motorcycles, a rather curious mix of buzzing, clicking, spinning, clacking (high heels, I imagine), and tapping. Vendors occupy “tables,” which are essentially bricks with a cement slab laid over them, hawking goods from winter clothes to durians. Leeks, onions, ginger (overflowing onto the concrete road from a wicker basket), cabbage heads meld to apples, oranges, pomelos, and tiny pears.

I continue walking and pass a supermarket. Ahead of me is another team of construction workers mixing and shoveling cement. They’ve almost taken up the entire road! I feel oddly comforted when I see school uniforms. I believe I have been at this school too long and am now only comfortable when I see middle school students. What a strange situation to be in.

On the yellowed mud walls of the alleyways are vents covered by pieces of perforated charcoal, the holes regularly spaced in the cylindrical piece of charcoal. As I continue walking, there’s sign of an expanse of garbage collecting, a veritable factory putting together these items. On the other side is an expanse of vegetable garden, translucent plastic sheets spread over tiny verdant spots struggling in the sable soil. An old grandfather, his wrinkles looking more like rivulets carving down a rock face, assiduously hacks away with an axe at a door frame. Four children kick a little bean bag to the side, enjoying the last glowing rays of a setting sun. I ask if I can take a photograph, and the grandfather shakes his heads majestically before returning to his work. I walk away hearing the chatter of the children, “who was that person? What did he want?”


A little grittiness can definitely be a good thing… if you get used to it.

A Back-Post

10-19-2008



9:35am. Getting squashed in a bus has its strange pleasures. I watch as a whisper of a grin lingers on a man’s face as he savors the guilty anonymity from being next to (and awfully close to!) that pretty girl with brown eyes, even if she is quite short… Together, we share incredulity for the thirty other people outside the bus who want to make it in. For all your discomfort, you smile (sheepishly, but nonetheless evilly) knowing that others have it worse.

北京社么都没有，就只有一大堆人！One passenger, her forehead glistening with sheen of sweat and light makeup, exclaims to her curly-haired friend. A middle-aged, balding man leaves the bus and relinquishes his coveted seat, now empty before me. I feel particularly masochistic (macho?) today and let another girl take it. In rapid 山东-accent Chinese she thanks me and chatters to her friend to take the seat instead. The bus driver’s assistant (ticketmaster...) screams himself hoarse commanding people to get on the bus through the back door. Back to back, arm against arm, head bumping into head (or armpits… or backs… or worse), the bus is a bumper car arena gone insane, jolting forward in incremental outbursts whenever the 西三环 inches forward. The driver, with clip-on sunglasses over his glasses, stoically looks forward.

…Grandmothers and grandfathers stroll through the park, their grandchildren waddling steps ahead of them. A tantalizing zephyr skims gracefully across the lake, mischievously ringing the willow windchimes along the water. Its cool, fresh touch runs with the warm smile of the 9:50am sunshine…

It seems that all the passengers are headed toward 香山. Her eyes tiny, gleaming orbs, a girl climbs onto a raised portion of the bus. The 山东girl helps her up and smiles to the girl, a radiant burst of exhilaration almost antithetical to the cramped breathlessness that permeates this bus. The mother passes a small plastic bag to her daughter to place next to her, and gently tells her to simply sit close to it—“你就不用一直拿着！”

…Kayaking on the Catalina ocean and being burnt idyllically in open seas… now I imagine skimming over a lake in tiny pedalboats in the middle of the city, the splop of fish rippling over the waters around me.

The elderly couple reclines on the stones along the lake now tentatively walk away. Her back to the stone, and her eyes barely shut, the woman rubbed her forehead with a rolling motion of her hands. As she leaves, she grabs a newspaper and says nobody in particular, “我们不该污染…”

Honking horns hoarsely upbraid each other, a contest of fury and cacophonous insanity. Jostling past each other in devoted fervor, one traveler apologies as she squeezes between two others. The bus halts, and the driver flips up his sunglasses. He extinguishes the engine as the passengers in the bus begin to complain, wondering why nothing is moving. Ahead, a vehicle has sputtered its last and rests in a chaotic mess in the middle of the street. Every vehicle behind is locked in endless limbo. Drivers come out, stretch, and smoke cigarettes. It’s the Chinese way… ‘任命了!’

“…Hehehahaha!” one man giggles, its pitch squeaky high and punctuated with punches of enthused mirth. His laugh is the sound of opened 青岛beer, of rowdy froth and golden, sunburnt bliss. Bracing his blue fold-up chair over his shoulder, he chuckles some more as he says goodbye to his two old friends, then saunters along the lakeside.

One a wheelchair, a bald man and his family glide across the same lakeside, moving in the opposite direction.

In a glorious glow, an innocent smile flashes across the mouth of a white-haired man and betrays his infinite joy. I imagine his mind is engaged in the mystery of generations as he holds the hand of his grandchild and strolls along with his elderly wife. He holds a cream-yellow cloth bag and wears a denim blue vest. As he passes underneath these willow trees, he turns to point at a group of young professional-looking women chatting on a picnic cloth.

“Married women are always too busy!” one of the women declares, rebelliously popping a cracker into her mouth as she finishes. “对对对!” the others follow. “就是吗!”

Relieved, I unzip my jacket and feel the fresh breeze as I leave the bus, still jammed in the traffic. The entrance to the park is directly in front, and although it isn’t 香山, I imagine it—like the bus ride—has stories to tell.

Even at Home...

Need to leave soon, so I'll have to keep this blog post focused on the minimals... I find it difficult to stay updated... there are so many blog posts that are still half done sitting here.

Data analysis doesn't tend to sound like drudgery, but when you're dealing with transcribing interviews, it does tend to get on your nerves. I have a bunch of interviews that need to be written out, and after having to spend over five hours writing one of them out, I am dreading the ridiculousness of the four or five more interviews I need to transcribe *groan*

To add to my ever-increasing blase for this project (who would've known), the next two weeks will be a long and arduous process to obtain all the necessary consent forms from *parents,* and that's going to be drudgery as well. There are always doldrums when it comes down to projects... and I much prefer the actual interviewing, interacting, and the intensive data collection that occurs on the front. I also love the data analysis portion sans the arduous processing bit.

This past week has basically been rest, recuperate, restock, and re-research. With a better idea of what the school looks like, I've been hiding in the library reading up on theoretical frameworks that fit a little better... I still need to return to touch up the pilot interview and make it 'shipworthy,' so to speak.

After this frustratingly long process of transcribing interviews, I've also decided giving diaries to my subjects to write in will also be a good move... A researcher (that I admire greatly!) working with students in London was pursuing a similar to project to mine and gave the students little diaries that they wrote it. No need to transcribe diaries... which is gauze on my wounds :p.

Tomorrow I re-engage my field, jumping on a plane in the afternoon and returning to the school. Hopefully when I return, I will be rested... but at the least, I'll have layers of winter clothing, a much better grip on my data, and plenty of gifts and stationery to give. This week has literally just been sitting at home, working with interviews, shopping for stuff, visiting relatives, and being a hungry hermit (you tend to miss lunch when you get stuck in there) in the library.

My father, incidentally, is also leaving tonight to America, where he'll meet my brother (Eric... I had no idea you tore *two* ligaments but not your ACL... you ought to tell me things like this!)

Raymond

Outside of the golden light of this room, the raucous Chinese middle school bell joins in a cacophony of roaring vehicles. The white moonlight mixes with the metallic scent of burnt garbage, glowing wispy-white in the swirling fog. Here in the Beijing suburbs, I have been rudely awaken from the intoxicating rush of quotidian life, reminded again that lifetimes are but breath upon a winter window.

Grinding to a halt, the machinery that contrived to fuel my ambitions and continued fervor is repulsed by the fact that Raymond is no longer here in this world. But I am further appalled by my own callousness and the fact that it is over a month. I have missed his funeral as well as a chance to bequeath my own wishes. His phone number is still written on my list of contacts, since he asked me to attend a concert next to his home the last time we spoke. Like the scent of smoldering garbage, unfinished business is most unbearable in this transient world.

It reminds me of how little I know about the lives of those with whom I’ve crossed paths in life. Perhaps some of my other friends have passed away without my knowledge. Jammed within the economic machine, Marx’s workers were alienated from their humanity. But one can’t help but feel alienated by the machine of personal dreams and goals, as humanistic as that has been framed (hey, Maslow’s self-actualization, right?)

My exploration of education and perceptions of education in China is coming full circle to an exploration of oneself. The need to be judged as an accomplished figure maintains importance in my life, even if I know it flickers tenuously on a phantasmagoric scrim. Having lost a friend without even knowing it, I question the importance of my dreams and goals, a virtue taught in so many educational systems. An ignorance of humanity derives from imbibing too quickly the intoxicating brew of ambition, personal satisfaction, and productivity.

But if these accomplishments are Plato’s shadows on a wall, what should my true aim be in life? Some friends in my life have opted for the subaltern world, defying the “hegemonic” educational track and ambitions for an unknown life. Ought I consider joining their ranks? My interest in education, I suppose, is an intensely selfish one.

The school bell, declaring its presence with a boisterous shout, rings again. It heralds the end of evening self-study. One day ends and the other must go on. Meeting him for the last time at a Starbucks in Taiwan, Raymond was relating stories about who he wanted to date, but couldn’t manage to keep his voice down. He never knew how to whisper. I think I can hear him shout.

Dancing

Blog Post 10/6

As the teachers’ meeting on home visits also concludes with sombre tones, our ears still ringing with stories of impoverished households, broken families, and sick children, I follow other teachers out into the chilly autumn night for some sightseeing. A chilly evening wind creeps through my two layers of jacket. Concluding with an equally sombre, dusty blue hue, the daytime sky gives way to night, and a dark shroud falls over the town.

As a tourist location, Yanqing serves as the back garden for Beijing. Only a two hour drive, it boasts of cleaner air, mountain getaways, and among other things, ‘farmer fare:’ an assortment of fermented tofu and pork cooked in a large clay pot over a charcoal fire, eaten with a mind boggling sundry of small plates loaded with yams, pig liver, multicoloured vegetables, mushrooms, buns… At the centre of the city is a vast plaza, meticulously cleaned and newly built. Unlike Beijing, the town is not lit perpetually. Glowing from lights from nearby shops, the consummate-white tiles if the plaza are an eerie shade of gray.

I was surprised to hear the dull thud of drumbeats as we walked onto the plaza. With a tingling sensation, I caught the strained whine of Chinese bugles (I think that’s what I’d call them) meandering among the beats. The real surprise came as we continued through the plaza. A small stereo was playing a Chinese pop song remixed to follow a four count swing beat. Randomly matched in gender, height, and age, couples were dancing a simple version of the rock-step—step-step beat. To my amusement, two elderly men were dancing together, their wrinkled faces glowing with childlike smiles.

The drumming and bugles were further down the plaza, where two parallel lines of men, women, and children were copying the movements of two old men leading the line. Holding neon pink feather fans in each hand, the men were performing a folk dance native to the region. In another context I might have thought the dance was choreographed at Las Vegas. A black garbage bag next to the musicians was being raided by several middle-aged women, their hands reappearing with pink flashes. Bystanders would tap to the enticing rhythm (not quite one you find in Social Dance at Stanford) and join the line, fan or no fan. Again to my surprise, several of the dancers were middle aged men. The whole scene reminded me of a dark club room, with a ridiculously strong beat and hundreds of people moving in unison.

“The musicians come out here every day!” the man next to me responds. “They volunteer their time to come.”
“How does everyone learn how to dance?”
The man grins and turns to me. “You just follow the person next to you and hopefully somebody knows it.”

As bad as I am at dancing, I can understand the allure.

First Week

Haven't been able to update regularly for lack of good internet access. Here's the first week all in one piece.

First Day of School

After writing a whole bunch of fieldnotes, I’m definitely not in the mood to write more about how I feel about my first day of school.

I also feel sadness at not being able to participate in all the Orientation activities at school and the typical Stanford school life.
The students are bright eyed and attentive, disciplined and careful to listen to the teacher at all times. Their level is varied, but as far as I can tell, the young seventh graders' hands are definitely in the air as often as I ask questions. Their curiosity manifests in looking over my notes, bean bag, and folder. After class, many more students say ‘hello teacher’ to me than before. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine.

It also begs questions of how I’m affecting my subjects, perhaps more than I ought to. It’s difficult to find a line because any contact means changing them. On the other hand, all of them have had exposure to foreigners teaching them, so my additional teaching may not be as significant in changing their educational perceptions.

Walking amid the concrete corridors in the school does tend to give me an odd sense of peacefulness. It reminds me of NEHS, the way classrooms are structured, the schedule, the teachers, but mostly the students. Although the school bell here resembles a fire alarm, the students continue to exemplify two qualities that I particularly liked in the Taiwanese public school system: respect for teachers and a generous team spirit.

After the first few home visits, I am convinced that there is poverty in this place. While at school all students seem equal, the truth is many come from homes that are (in American standards) but shacks. Yet they continue to offer what little they have to others.

It’s 9:55 and time for bed.

23 Sept 2008 9:29am

It comes as a surprise that the students are laughing so much during their class time, speaking up so often, and having so much enthusiasm for their learning. Auditing math class this morning left me to nostalgic for my old days at NEHS, except we never had that same kind of enthusiasm. I’m not sure we ever shouted out the answers just because we couldn’t keep them in anymore. I was impressed by the teacher’s finesse in revealing the concept of symmetry step by step, starting from concrete images like folded paper that she had cut herself to discrete images in the textbook all the way to abstract ideas like squares, triangles, circles, and rhombi.

The chilly autumn weather brings warm memories of middle and high school, the morning sunrise leaving golden splotches in the sky that were uplifting if only because they are so rare in the smoky, smog-ridden Beijing suburb sky. The rains yesterday cleared out a good amount of gunk in the air, I think. What glory to one’s lungs it is to have clean air!

It leaves a huge smile on my face. I think I’m going to buy some fruit today as well. And audit another class in the next hour.

25 Sept 2008

One of the teachers was decorating the classroom and fell off a ladder, hurting his waist. I’m stepping in for this week to teach his two classes and lead his students as a homeroom teacher momentarily. The past few days have been extremely draining—the first year of teaching, I’m sure many will say, is not for the weak of heart. Especially when you’re trying to conduct research at the same time. Good thing I’ve done ESL activities in Anhui already!

A peaceful morning and knowing that British club volunteers will help me take some of the difficulty in teaching two classes, I’m feeling much more relaxed.

It’s difficult right trying to figure out where my project is headed. I’ll be giving an overview tonight, but I’m afraid of stepping on toes accidentally or passing ethical boundaries. Otherwise casual conversations being written down could mean that I’m invading privacy.

Otherwise, it’s a question of what approach to take at this crossroads. I have a wonderful break to do home visits, but that means I’ll need to coordinate with students first or at least before Sunday.

Here are some possible approaches:
1. Start doing a documentation scavenge
2. Continue with class observations
3. Work on collecting interviews and home visits
4. Analysis and Future Approaches
5. Keeping tabs on ethics and validity

The teachers in the 8th grade office are currently having an informal break trying to photograph a 馒头 with some 咸菜 in it. It’s quite amusing, because it looks like the 馒头 has a stuffed, brown mouth. The music teacher is getting nice and close and trying to photograph it, to the amusement of all the teachers in the room.

I’m thinking about getting a haircut and somehow we’ve moved over to talking about me and possible girlfriends here.

September 26, 2008

Getting a chance to say, in front of all the teachers, exactly what I want to do (understand the student’s perceptions of education and how they’ve come to hold them) leaves me with a feeling of relief. During the faculty meeting, I not only got a chance to meet all the teachers, I informed them that I might copy down what they say in casual conversations, obviously leaving their names out of it.

While I thought it would be a dangerous thing to say, a teacher later bought me seven beautiful (and enticingly aromatic) apples, rosy in color with the occasional speckle. It reminded me that being a human being comes before being a researcher. That lesson was soon repeated after hearing a long conversation with some of the teachers about the challenges of teaching migrant students.

In addition to poverty, the students come from a world of transience, shuttling from one school to the next without much chance to build relationships. The homeroom teachers have mentioned the importance of getting the students’ back stories… the divorces, moves, illness, poverty, and all sorts of bitter experiences that underlie the students’ present condition at school. Going on several home visits this week myself, this lesson rings true in my heart (maybe ‘wrings my heart’ is better).

These experiences ignite a passion within me for teaching as well as migrant students in China. While a researcher remains, in many ways, aloof from his or her subjects, I feel a calling for this population. Perhaps I may return in another capacity another year.

Bedtime at 10:21. Waking up at 5:50 tomorrow to go running with the students :).

The First Day

It feels like I'm at a new college and working to move in. I don't know anyone right now, neither teachers nor students, and I've yet to start teaching (boy, will that be strange). Something in the back of my head tells me I ought to be preparing for teaching or preparing for interviews... or *something,* but I also realize the importance of taking things slowly... of getting to know people and just being around. I'm just about to go take a nap, given the fact that I woke up at 6:00am in the morning, but I'll be heading out soon to eat and meet with more students.

--James

Migration

As this leg of the journey ends, I prepare my heart to welcome what constitutes the culmination of months of preparation. In less than an hour, I will be heading to the middle school that I will be living at, doing research and a little teaching simultaneously.

The past few weeks have centered around a project that we just finished about teacher incentives at migrant schools. Having a chance to work with Renmin University students has been an honor and pleasure on par with my experiences with Nanjing University students. In both cases, we've collaborated on projects or toward a common goal, and there is a camaraderie and warmth that affects me deeply. Although there are times of disagreement or frustration (as we discussed last night while shopping in Xidan district, Chinese and American minds often tick differently), I'm grateful for this opportunity to connect with local students.

As a nascent anthropologist, I find Beijing a city of conflicting themes. Beauty and ugliness, modern and ancient, the sublime mixed with the mundane, extravagance in dire contrast to the squalor that others live in. There is deep-seated pride in being Chinese; in having an Asian heritage, but the Western ways of life have an irresistible allure. My first club/bar experience two nights ago suggested one of the most troubling and interesting divides between the generations, with new expressions of Chinese 'youthfulness' developing within a fragmented system.

My work with migrant schools has shown me precisely the same themes, but in sharper relief, and the stakes are that much higher. Schools are a locus of social mobility; one doesn't climb a social ladder without a praxis/habits befitting of high class. And where does one find the habits and tastes that are socially recognized as 'classy?' School. At the same time, they've been placed in a situation where a high class education is not a viable option, and a second class education most often generates second class citizens (all these terms are subjective, but like 'race,' they have very real ramifications). Some of them go straight to work, others return home to test into high school. They are citizens but still treated as outsiders; they are legally allowed to go to high levels of education but cannot.

A discourse of ethical treatment of migrants is developing, but it has yet to permeate all levels of society. If anything, the people of China are conflicted about whether it is ethical to devote equal resources to the migrants. One isn't surprised that the Malthusian underpinnings of the One Child Policy (rightfully?) translates to fears that having swells of migrants come to the city will overwhelm its resources. For the migrants, many still inspired by socialist ideals of equality, this ethical reasoning generates further contradiction.

As such, migrants are lodged in limbo. One one hand, they are placed on a pedestal by liberal professors, reporters, foreign NGOs, etc. who provide the students with resources and the teachers with training. On the other, they are marginalized by public school principals who would rather wish the migrants return home to continue their schooling rather than sapping resources from the public school students. Legally, they are allowed to stay in the city and receive education, but decentralization has characterized the Chinese educational system since the 1980s. Local governments are supposed to pay for the education of migrants, but the central government really doesn't want to force them to take migrant students for free.

Personally, I am excited most about how these middle school students will respond. They are coming of age within a multiplicity of contradictory discourses, all framed by rapid economic prosperity. Where do ideas like 'right to education' or 'equality' come in? Most importantly, what does education mean to these students--an education meant to prepare them for a Brave New World that has few promises of certainty?

And even while I've been hard at work studying the migrants, I am faint from my attempts to deal with the dizzying discord in my own life. With less than 40 minutes to go, I'm both excited and terrified of what lies ahead. First and foremost, will I have peers to talk to freely? Will I be able to fit in? Will I be comfortable teaching and doing research? Will I be welcomed? I'm both deeply inspired and tired of this topic, having ready countless reports (oh, but with so many more unread!), conducted several interviews, and talked ad nauseum about certain topics in the field. I feel like the narrator in Season of Migration to the North, discovering in myself a contemporary Mustafa... full of conflict in my identities, only this time it's East and West.

This thought brings me some clarity: I am a migrant among migrants, both literally and figuratively. I am a transnational without much semblance of home, dealing with my own issues as I migrate across the Pacific. It is in this stream of consciousness that I recall the promises of my firm identity as a Christian... a permanent home awaiting my return independent of my performance here, a relationship that staves away lonliness independent of those around me.

One doesn't move without taking a step, I guess. The Nile keeps on moving =p.

(Para)lympian Proportions

The day began quite uneventfully. After we grabbed some quick lunch fare from the Renmin dining hall, five of us rushed to the subway station to the north of campus. This leg of the trip felt fine enough, but as soon as we stepped off the subway at the Olympic Park transfer station, the crowds began to well up.

We made a few mistakes. First, we walked for a full ten minutes before being directed to a bus line that runs around the park. Second... we really should have just taken the subway, because there was a line about a hundred meters long waiting at the bus station. Third... we really should have just squeezed in the bus and gone face to face with strangers rather than waiting for the next one, because we were squeezed in the bus literally vis-a-vis strangers anyway. With exception to the Tokyo subway, I don't quite remember being sqashed so close to other people. Fourth, we shouldn't have been so polite at the security checkpoint. It's important to keep your place in line and blindly shuffle forward or you'll be waiting for a while. I kept thinking that human beings resemble water when they're moving in crowds.

After two hours of suffocating travel, we arrived at the tennis stadium a little ruffled. The place resembles a blooming flower, each of the six petals seating for spectators and the center a tennis court. A searing ray of sunlight sploshed across half the stadium, and those seats were almost always empty. Maybe the spectators all evaporated?

Two spectators behind me whispered to each other,

"What are they playing today?"
"Tennis, I think."
"How do you play tennis?"

I almost fell off the (not so comfortable) seat. But the other spectators in the crowd had begun a rhythmic clap, driven by the accouncement that the game was to begin in two minutes. A neat line of six people wearing gray nylon jackets and gray caps walked into the middle of the court and methodically split to seats on the side of the court. These were in charge of judging whether shots had landed within the court.

In a voice that reminds me of car commercials or movie trailers, the announcer began introducing the players and judge. The crowd really got riled up! Two players, one British and the other Sweedish, were set to play the first match. They rolled out onto the court and deftly heaved themselves onto special wheelchairs (five instead of two wheels). The weather had gotten quite dusty in the meantime, and an eerie sheen of dull gold fell on the eastern half of the stadium.

To be honest, I wasn't so impressed with the male's singles. One player was clearly better trained and won quickly and without any particularly memorable plays. The other player kept shifting to one side of the court, and the British player would simply play the ball on the other side. I can't say it was entirely pleasurable. I had a slight headache and was extremely thirsty. I had started flipping through the spectators guide looking through the map. A rather rotund woman took a seat next to mine with two bags of, well, food. She proceded to open little snacks and eat them audibly to my annoyment. Then she causally plopped her bags of food on my spectator's guide (which I had placed to the seat on my left). I also lost my ticket (I suspect it might have been taken, since I placed it on top of my spectator's guide).

Everything changed when the next match began, between two women of Dutch nationality. Vergeer and Homan, the former holding last year's champion title, and the latter entering the Paralympics for the first time. The two were so evenly matched that we were on the verge of our seats. I recall getting a bottle of water from Taylor, eating a few crackers from Elton, but otherwise, my eyes were entirely focused on the match.

They play as though the wheelchairs were a part of them; Homan had an amputated leg, and Vergeer was paralyzed from waist down. The first set went 6-2 in Vergeer's favor. She had a calmness to her playing style that lent her returns a fluid grace that Homan simply couldn't keep up with. Her serves were meticulous and always landed just before the boundary line, making it difficult for Homan to wheel over and make good returns. On the other hand, Homan's style was that of a warrior, bending over her wheelchair precariously and returning seemingly-impossible serves just over the net. She had an immediacy and vigor that inspired me (and I suppose the other spectators).

The second set was exactly the opposite: 6-4 in Homan's favor. Her serves were upward of 130 km/hour (and she's on a wheelchair) and, while often stopped by the net, had Vergeer totally on the guard at all times. It was a tense back and forth, with some fantastic plays. In one play that went for almost two minutes, there were about three or four saves that had the spectators gasping with amazement. Homan would wheel over furiously at a serve on the opposite corner, do a 180 and return the ball while in mid rotation, a perfect serve that would bounce off the opposite corner of Vergeer's side. The game was ridiculously tense.

The spectators also started doing a human wave. The Dutch supporters thought it would be fun to try to get something going, and the Chinese spectators sitting opposite to them began to catch on. Even the Olympic volunteers started helping by coordinating the wave. During the break, we would all see which side of the flower petal had the loudest and most coordinated wave.

But it got better. The last match reached 6-6, and the final match was one of intense emotion. Homan could be seen slapping her thighs and shouting encouragement to herself, while Vergeer was in no better shape, gripping her racquet until her knuckles were bright white. The judge tried to announce the scores nonchalantly, but her voice betrayed excitement in her raised pitch and over-compensated detachment. The crowd went completely silent when the score went to 6-6. In the faceoff, I felt like the entire crowd had fallen into a strange dimension, absorbed in the game as closely as the players.

Homan was furious when she missed the last return; her heroic save just wasn't enough to send the ball over the net. She screamed and threw her racquet on the ground with such force that it bounced and landed almost 30 meters away. She hugged Vergeer to be polite, but frustrated, she wheeled off the court and didn't even shake hands with the judge. Vergeer on the other hand wheeled around the stadium with such mirth. An impromptu human wave began again. Both players were completely exhausted after two hours of playing, but Vergeer's face had an incandescent glow (with a clear indication of relief!).

The award ceremony was a feat as well; over 30 volunteers were on the court unrolling carpets, moving flag poles, setting up platforms, and arranging positions for people to stand. In less than 10 minutes, the whole court was transformed. What a game.

We tried to tour the Olympic Park but accidentally walked out of the perimenter (you need to go through security, but I lost my ticket and couldn't). The others went back in, but Taylor and I decided to head back. I'll just say our return wasn't quite as fun as that game. Being squashed in the bus was not very fun at all.

Oh, last interesting tidbit, a 30ish year old man wearing a polo shirt and holding a Nikon camera asked Taylor to take a photo with his girlfriend in the Olympic Park. Go figure.

English?

I am enthralled by society and its workings. Really.

For the past few days, I've been living at Renmin University, but finally on this Friday night had a chance to go around campus. Walking with two of my seminar friends, they guided me through campus.

"That's the building of truth seeking," they mentioned, explaining that Renmin was one of the only 'true' CCP schools that was built after the CCP was in total power.

There are couples strolling leisurely down the asphalt paved road, dim with the golden light of streetlamps. A ring of friends gathers on the grass, their chatter barely audible and their faces masked by the twilight. Under a blinding white stadium lamp, a group of thirty or so women, some middle aged and graying gracefully, others young and dressed in T-shirts, dance to a completely inappropriate *yodel* in a small courtyard nearby. On the field are joggers. One of them is huffing in an exaggerated heave and passes a line on the track with a burst of extra speed as he loops around for yet another round. At the side of the field are ten or so (mainly women) practicing their kicks, one of them releases a rather humorous growl every time he mock-kicks a tree. Most of campus tonight is lively--the vivid dash of a bicycle beside me as I stroll along the street, a girl in a turquoise skirt sitting horizontally behind the bicycle of a college aged student, her feet crossed and just barely off the ground... the eerie green neon lights that illuminate a small sculpture and the miniature lake on campus... a flash of rollerblades and skateboards from a group of ten or so guys performing street tricks... the tapping of feet coming out of the library. Two parents, yet to leave campus after helping their freshman child settle in (this is the first week of school), sit on a wooden bench in the central gate courtyard, their furrowed faces lit by an ornate incandescent lamp. Several red posters exhort students to work hard and love their alma mater, or in other cases welcome new students.

I also had a chance to participate in English corner tonight, which is basically a gathering of plenty of people who want to learn English. My guides first introduced me to this group, meeting in the twilight of a small plaza on east campus. The darkness is bewildering and I keep questioning why they don't light up the place, now that the twlight has offically entered into evening. I decide to drop by and say hello to two other people on the outskirts of a dark mass of people speaking an unintelligible mess of English and Chinese.

"What's going on here?" I ask I hope in a friendly tone.

The two look at me in bewilderment, not sure if I'm a foreigner or a student. I notice the other one peering intently trying to figure out my skin color in the twilight, edging forward ever so slightly to try to get a better look. Too effortlessly do I commadeer the conversation, while I am only a newcomer. Suddenly I'm asking a slew of questions in English, and I forget to stop and ask myself why they are letting this upstart ask questions about 'why they are interested in learning English,' 'where their old hometown is...' I'm not a teacher here, and in hindsight, I implicitly felt that having an American accent to my English translated to superiority. A lady joins our conversation, now working in tourism management and having graduated from Hebei province last year. The student from Tsinghua who does communications management shifts to my right; another recent graduate, who now works 10 hours a day (overtime) at a company, shifts to my left. After some banter, the lady offers her ticket to the Paraolympics, explaining that her mother could not make it to the city. I politely decline but wonder why she never offered it to the other two standing next to me.

As I write this in a cafe, I'm realizing how many foreigners in this cafe. It's a strange understanding... that foreigners here are given so many more creature comforts. I couldn't figure out how to say ginger ale in Chinese, so I said "ginger ale" instead when they asked for my order. The waitress--trainee, rather--was quite embarrassed at her inability to comprehend the first time. If I asked in Chinese for 铁观音 tea in a cafe that sells "Iron Goddess Tea," would the waitress/waiter feel embarrassed at not understanding? Why, according to my friend from Renmin, are people building fortunes doing English education--whether providing study abroad programs, or resigning as the assistant dean of Tsinghua's English department to start a billion-dollar enterprise teaching English?

Walking out of the 五道口地铁站，I notice that a group of two white skinned and one black skinned men plow through the crowd with a subtle swagger. In the mass of people moving across the street, these three men seem to float through the crosswalk. I smell a tinge of colonge and notice the curls on one of the guy's head and his sweat stained dress shirt. Chinese tourists at Stanford or San Francisico surely do not walk down the street like this (they probably move in flocks... but that's another story xP).

Is English the language of elites? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that English speakers end up having higher wages or foreigners who visit are well-to-do. How do we explain the fact that in the morning, while we visited a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, a man slightly off his rocker bellowed: "老外怎么这么傻?" "Why are foreigners so stupid?" How do we explain the pride that befits a country rife with nationalism... the arrogance in our/their (what a tough question for me) culture, the ancient, the language, the food?

Surely, the vision of college life in China suggests that international norms are glocalized. Chinese college students aren't receiving 'Western' ideals like passive porecelain receptacles, but rather as people with agency and spirit, blending 'West' and 'East' in ways that may engender shocking incongruities from the outsider's perspective.

At the Brink of Heading Out

I will be flying into Beijing tomorrow, and I'm hardly ready.

The past two weeks were supposed to be a sojourn and a period of rest, but I feel as though my confidence has withered away. To imagine that tomorrow I will be in the city, preparing for many months of research leaves me with a little bit of dread.

The realities of my weaknesses, granite monuments in the dizzying landscape of my life, stare at me gravely. There's no way I'll have confidence that I'll have a safe place to stay; things to eat; comfort... and there is even more doubt about my abilities as a researcher. Is my interview protocol finally complete? Is there any way to guarantee that I won't scare away my subjects? Having emailed countless contacts, compiled scores of references, written and rewritten interview protocols, I've somehow forgotten that my breath comes not from the work of my hands but rather the workings of my spirit. The traveler in a desert that doesn't bring water will soon tire.

My father likes to sit in his room opposite mine, equally engrossed as I am in my computer. Wearing an undershirt, he nonchalantly walks into my room and lies down on the bed (well, I'm not sure it counts since I've only been here two weeks). He declares that the air conditioning is more comfortable here. "Do you have anything you need?" he asks, "vitamins?"

"Yeah, I packed those."
"聖經呢？可以帶吧？"
"已經在我書包了。"
"Maybe you should bring some extra Bibles... 我到時候過去在帶給你。"
"我十月就回台灣了，到時候再說吧。"

My mom is getting ready for her first day of teaching tomorrow, pulling out that old microphone so that her voice doesn't get strained. She cooked a fantastic dinner tonight, one that I'll miss dearly. She passes my room and--now a little frustrated by the fact that I don't do it myself--shuts the door to not let the air conditioning run out.

It leaves my heart not a little sore to know that it's going to be goodbye yet again... and that it's time yet again to jump into that uncertain world. But I know full well that they'll still be around every time I return to welcome me wildly (boy, my mom is a little crazy at the airport).

But what's more, even when the day comes when they aren't able to, God has already revealed his promise to be that sanctuary. I've structured my mission for the past months to be a wonderful researcher, but I sense God calling me to forgo that mission to learn more about God in a completely new context. At first I thought it was to trust God to somehow magically take care of everything. But God isn't Santa Claus. I think He's gently urging me to understand that everything can go to pieces, but he'll continue to be--like my parents--an eternal sanctuary amid it all, even in death.

I will be flying into Beijing tomorrow, and I'm hardly ready. But does that matter?

Photo-Fest

I've too many photos, I've decided.

I've not enough time to do a good sweep through of my photos and choose my favorites, so I just chose a few from each of them to throw onto here. Hope they're okay =p.

合欢山

南京

黃山

愛民，上海

History

I've recently been learning what it means to have witnesses to history. It started with something quite mundane.

My mother has a a plastic plate that I colored in preschool displayed alongside fancy plates and mementos. It's quite ugly. There are two stick figures, one green and one blue. Their faces are formed by an unconnected, squiggly line that attempts to form an oval. Their hair consists of five lines each, radiating from this lopsided oval, leaving their heads looking more like ameoba with long flagella. This plate is one of the only objects that shows I attended preschool in America.

But it reminded me that there were other witnesses. The courtyard outside the Nanking Massacre Victims' Memorial reminds me of a sci-fi temple. Rubble cracks beneath my sneakers as I accidentally slip off the stone walkway. The obnoxious sun and humid air are strangling. Bullet holes further disfigure the ragged concrete walls. Near the center of the courtyard is an enormous silver bell. It's called the bell of peace but seems more like one you hear tolling in a graveyard, as the whole place is seething with oppression.

A blast of air conditioning greets you as you enter the actual memorial , a relief from the furnace-like temperatures of Nanking (南京是中國四大火爐之一). But the whole exhibit is doused in a shroud of darkness, leaving your eyes struggling to see what's ahead of you.

The exhibits are a little distasteful and overtly political. One wonders why Japanese translations are written alongside the English and Chinese. Photographs are chosen to overwhelm you with emotional and gory images, with questionable captions that ring of "heartless Japanese" and "comrades." My friend called me over, and the nearby guard questioned me about whether "一场浩劫" could be a part of "文明史" (whether a massacre could be a part of civilized history). "Obviously not," he said, "because civilized history is good." Apparently one of the guests had informed the guard that their description was incorrect, and the museum curator decided to change the words the next day.

But soon, one begins to realize that there are few tasteful ways to talk about the massacre. When more credible first-hand accounts like journals, letters, orders, interviews with Japanese soldiers, and Japanese newspapers at the time begin to confirm the horrors, I begin to understand what Conrad and Golding meant. The atrocities testify to the darkness in human nature, a bestial survival instinct that weathers away--when given a chance--any socially-cultured 'civility.' Of course, I don't discount the heros like Magee and Rabe (ironically, the former an American pastor who collaborated with the latter, a German Nazi businessman) who certainly defied the times. And I'm not saying the "Japanese" deserve the title of bestial. Rather, when governments fail and humans are left on their own, we're all prone to wade deep into the murky river and discover our "heart of darkness."

But enough on this.

Before you loop out of the memorial, you walk through a half-excavated graveyard, the site of a mass execution. These countless, sun-bleached bones are now housed under a rectangular prism, an obsidian and austere structure. As I walk on the glass panes, just centimeters above a maddening crumple of countless femurs, skulls, and radii, a chill courses under my skin and I begin to understand... life is fragile and short. It's an experience that leaves you moody for days, When your blood and ancestry is the same as these people, either extinguished by a fortunate bullet or suffocating slowly in a watery mess, you can't help but feel an eerie connection.

It's doubly chilling to hear from a living witness what one gathers from a staid memorial. Recently, my grandfather has been telling my brother and me (obviously at different times) stories of his youth. When the Japanese attacked Shanghai, my grandfather was witness to some of those same atrocities. They burned down his home, for that matter. Lots more on this... but it's a story for another day.

They say history is boring. I must disagree.

Long-Overdue Update

The short update goes like this:

I've returned from China a week ago and have been preparing for my research trip to Bejing in September. The previous month has provided a taste of China and what to expect, but more importantly, it has left me with human faces that I can remember and love. In its essence, teaching middle school students has left a burning reminder of why I wanted to do research on middle school students in the first place. More on this in the long update ;).

In the meantime, I've been revisiting Baldur's Gate 2 (old computer RPG), my church in Taiwan, my grandparents, the National Taiwan University library (NTU... which by the way is a fantastic university and has a gorgeous campus), and plenty of email/phone calls to work out logistics.

Since then, some highlights of my past two weeks in China have been the following:

a) 去爬愛民後山、黃山，去漂流 (Climbing the back mountains of Ai Min, Yellow Mountain, and going river rafting)
b) 在學校裡有奧運活動
c) 在村裡面搞營火晚會 (Having a bonfire night at the village)
e) 最後一天上課，大家哭哭啼啼的 :( (The last day of class, with everyone in really low spirits)
f) 去南京...江心洲、明孝陵、中山陵、澳體、總統府、夫子廟、同胞紀念館、等！ (touring Nanking...and lots of places that are ridiculously hard to translate ;p)

Call that a menu for what comes beyond. The long update goes something like this:
-*-*-*-*

a) 經過媽媽細心的教導，學到這句話：「我見青山多嫵媚，料青山見我應如是。」
Growing up in Taiwan, I've always had an affinity for the ocean and mountains. Soaking in the fog at the top of a peak, I find those seemingly mundane burdens dispelled in the enthralling breath of the mountain. The trek up Yellow Mountain started at 6:00am in the morning at the 'waist' of the mountain (山腰) and ended for me at 5:30pm as we made our final steps into the 'North Sea Hostel.' Most of the trail was well paved granite, sometimes cut directly into the rock face. Along the way were 挑夫 (pictured here), who would shoulder burdens up to fifty kilograms up the mountains. A well-organized national park, the best indicators of this are the immaculate and modern bathrooms!

Needless to say, walking up steps isn't easy when there's a whole day's worth. What I find most fascinating is how climbing mountains easily reflects the way humans approach life. Sometimes (especially in our American volunteers!) Yellow Mountain is a challenge, something of a race to the top. Each step was working toward a goal, each rest to charge up for the next stretch of climbing. The enjoyment from overcoming a challenge as formidable as Yellow Mountain manifests itself in victory shouts at the peaks, plenty of drinking, and for myself, the rush of adrenaline that matches that last step into the hostel. Sometimes the scenery is the focus. For the photographer in me, finding the best vantage point for the sea of clouds on the other side of the peak was my driving force. Along the way were elderly folk whose wrinkles resembled peach pits, stopping every twenty steps to stretch out and comment on the scenery, and riding cable cars (索道) up to the mountain peaks. Sometimes the people are the focus. Losing the other 30 people in Learning Enterprises was a little daunting, and for a while, I was calling all the people I knew frantically. There's a little bit of apprehension associated with hiking with strangers in a mountain that you know little about, but more importantly, the fact that people can whittle away whole afternoons talking to their friends in coffee shops is testament to how a hike (generally the last thing one would endeavor alone) can become pleasurable in the presence of friends. I eventually met up with 曉丹，another volunteer from my village along the way, but we never saw any other volunteer on the way up. Sometimes its the memories that matter. Trails would experience traffic jams as one or two tourists decided to turn around and photograph or call their relatives. Being able to document a trip as fully as possible for future reference seems to be the forte of middle aged fathers with video cameras and prosumer SLRs. I can't tell you how many times fathers would stop to photograph their families. It's also testament to China's developing economy, but that's another story.

Third Week of China

Yikes. What a week. For lack of more time to write I'm going to have to keep this update short.

Teaching can be brutal when you realize it takes five or six hours to prepare for class. But living in a village can be fantastic when you have the chance to slow down and enjoy the scenery.

Highlights of the week in bullet form:
1) Meeting a red/black striped snake in the process of devouring a huge toad. A farmer took a hoe and clamped off its head, but we learned later the snake would've killed one of us (poison) if we weren't careful.
2) Having a Holiday Learning Day, where we taught kids about Thanksgiving and other types of holidays. It was pretty awesome.
3) Spending LOTS of time with my teaching partners and my students, which is the biggest blessing ever. It's getting me thinking about my personal identity as either Chinese, Taiwanese, or America. Or none? I love the students here, both my partners from Nanjing (some of the most competent people I've met) and my students in the village. I've come to realize that I share much more in common with the people here, and I'm many, MANY times more comfortable with their way of living than in America. But more on that when I have more time. It's hard to unpack.
4) Much of this experience is preparing me implicitly for a real challenge in Beijing later in the year, and I'm trying to master the Chinese language as well as the underlying cultural norms that surround the perhaps-sensitive topic. Many of my students have parents who are migrant workers, and it's interesting to be able to see how they cope in the villages.

Out of time. Will write more later =p

In the Middle of China

After a nine hour bus ride we finally arrived at our village. It's called "ai ming" or "love people." Of all the village assignments, we received the one with the best natural environment. There is so much beauty here, and our host family even grows their own tea.

My host is called Principal Pan, and he lives with his son (Messi) and wife in a small home. Alick, Ivy, and Mischa live in this host home. We have some fantastic food every day, mostly beans, gourd, some kind of vegetable, and a rare taste of meat. The majority of food is literally from the ground to the table, grown in the surrounding farmland. Principal Pan's wife (we call her "a yi") is a master chef and does wonders with chilis, vegetables, and some herbs. Every evening, we are offered beer or some other alcoholic beverage, and Principal Pan tries to get us to drink up. The beer here is the only cold beverage you'll get: every other beverage is tea. But then again, I love the latter, since the tea is ridiculously fresh and would cost a fortune anywhere else in the world. Lisa, who is Messi's cousin, is living with us because her parents have moved into the city to find work. She is a perceptive 14 year old, quite immature at times, but showing wisdom beyond her years. She likes to push me around and make fun of me, and she gets along well with all of us.

My team consists of Matt Watson (you might now him--Allen and he are rock climbing buddies, and he lived in Faisan), Malin (a freshman from Georgetown), Alick (a first year graduate student at Nanking university studying political economics), Clam (a biochemistry graduate student), Ivy, Winnie, Mischa (an American student from New Mexico State), and Heidi. The nine of us work together to teach about 200 students ranging from 1 - 12 grade.

I really enjoy village living in spite of its hardships. The community feeling here is one that I wish I could find at Stanford. Perhaps it's because there's so LITTLE privacy: everything you do is public. The "sanitary pit" is truly a pit in the middle of nowhere, and if anyone wanted to, they could say hello to you while you were at it. I need to bathe outdoors (usually under the moonlight or starlight, which is quite an experience when it is breathtakingly beautiful outdoors--more on that in a second), and anyone who wanted to look around could say hello while I were at that. I sleep with two roommates, and have to change in there. I eat with the same people every day at the same time, and we talk about everything that day (the conversations usually revolve around language [our dialects or English], food [what we like to eat, how to cook, how to make noodles, how to make dumplings], or students [how we can revise our teaching plans, etc]). We tease each other about our love lives mercilessly, and what's most interesting, we've really only known each other about one week and I feel a connection much deeper than I've felt with any of my American counterparts in Shanghai.

The first week of teaching, as always, in grueling. The first week of teaching has just ended, and I'm honestly a little relieved. I'm teaching two classes of middle school students, most of them either too shy to speak, too proud to listen, or too distracted to care. With around 50 students in total, I'm spending most of my day preparing lesson plans with my teaching partners, working out suitable games (holy smokes--that's hard when your students don't give a jiffy about "immature" games), planning the class, and reading their assignments. I love my students dearly in spite of their frustrating reactions to my teaching at times.

Ai Ming is one of the most breathtaking places in the world. It rivals Yosemite in its natural beauty. The surrounding mountains are carpeted by poetic bamboo and tea groves; a river runs through the valley, with crystal clear water and teeming with life. The moon rises to its zenith (full moon was yesterday) and peeks over the mountain tops, shrouded in fog and equally poetic in its majesty. It seems like the whole place was sculpted.

I've just run out of time at the internet cafe, so I'm going to wrap this up by saying I'm well and good :).

Shanghai

Finally found internet!

Currently sitting in a hostel in Shanghai preparing for our trip to Anhui. Orientation, to be honest, has turned out to be much more relaxed than I had first imagined. We spent about one hour talking about the program, and most of the day we're just wandering the city visiting places. Some highlights have been the Shanghai Aquarium, the underwater tourist tunnel, the "Bund" (which is a fantastic walk down the shoreline of the Huang Pu river), and the Orientatial Pearl.

First, prices vary massively from place to place, ostensibly because the rich are ridiculously rich and the poor remain relatively poor. From beragged beggars to yuppies in designer clothing, the streets of Shanghai remain a place of disparity.

People here are all but shy, crossing the road with no consideration to the traffic signals or pedestrian signals, shouting at restaurants, and hawking goods (everything from kites to roller blades) mercilessly. At the same time, there is a heart-warming quality to some of the storekeepers and restaurants.

Two more days of orientation and we're headed off!

Last Night in Taiwan

After 3 Japanese restaurants, over seven meals of seafood, a few hours of hiking, three hours playing golf with my father, hundreds of hours spent with my family, sixteen different types of fruit (and counting), and plenty of reminiscing, I'm officially leaving Taiwan tomorrow.

In a brief sojourn at home, I've discovered a beauty to Taiwan that I'd forgotten in the months before. Where the mountains meet the ocean, a dialogue begins, ranging from subtle whispers of the breathing tide upon granite to an altercation of waves against equally stubborn rock. The resulting landscape has a deliberate quality, reminding me how seemingly disparate elements complement each other.

Airport Anthropology

Airports, where I seem to have been spending huge amounts of time, suggest subtle dynamics that highlight some fascinating elements of human nature.

The first branch of my travels taught me how passengers avoid each other as a sign of politeness. Earlier in the week on my LAX-DFW branch of the flight, I chomped down a small burger before hopping on the plane. Across from me were three Asian women, behind me was a guy reading his newspaper. As I squeezed into the table between them, all four of them readjusted their sitting posture, and politely moved away from me. I ordered my single burger across a counter that almost maximized the distance from my hand to the servers. A line cued up behind the drink fountain to maximize the amount of distance from each individual person. As I moved over to the boarding gate, I noticed how all of the chairs were pointed at 150 degree oblique angles from others, and there were clusters of seats. People of similar race (even if strangers) would cluster together; people of similar language; obviously family relations would cluster as far from other clusters as possible. Going to the bathroom, every guy seems to maximize the space from his urinal to the other guy's.

Needless to say, airports are one of the only locations in the world that brings so many strangers together in close proximity. Maybe we're all just avoiding each other cause we know we'll be stuck in a tiny plane cabin. Or perhaps there's an underlying fear of proximity to others, especially those unlike us. What I find most interesting is the importance of maintaining distance and politeness in airports. I'd imagine there's data to support this kind of phenomenon in other contexts (buses, subways, restaurants). What makes people choose one bus seat from another?

The second branch of my flight from DFW to MIA taught me that the expression of love often surpasses these rules of public space. One husband upon landing called (I assume his wife) with a barrage of "sweetie," "honey," and "I can't wait to get back to our bed." Quite loudly. Another couple sitting next to me were leaning over each other and speaking in a boisterous Texan drawl (the two are not always linked, mind you), complaining about each other but obviously in an endearing way. As we wait to board, a father is mock-wrestling with his son ignoring the fact that he's bumping into other passengers. These and other examples highlighted how levels of rules are stratified: social rules are ignored when other more important ones arise.

Arriving in Belize, I realized that waiting, I believe, is distinct from patience. Patience is a characteristic; waiting is an activity, and for many in the airport, an oxymoron: an activity that requires passivity. I beg to differ.

The frustrations linked with waiting (for a delayed plane... for baggage that doesn't arrive... for friends who are coming in later flights--incidentally, Chrissy waited from 11am to 6pm for the rest of the Belize team to arrive) often arise from uncertainty. One lady who had also lost a parcel on the way to Belize said she just wanted to know exactly where and when it would arrive, so she knew how long to wait. I must admit my own patience was severely tested when my bags were lost both on the way to Belize and the way back to LA. With a given timespan, other tasks can be allocated to that time. With uncertainty, however, that time more often than not just goes into anxious thumb twiddling and increased blood pressure.

I realized that waiting can be seen as an art form. By accepting the uncertainties and embracing the times "between the margins" of your next (possibly to-be-canceled) event, I find myself able to enjoy quirky conversations, bits of a book, and observing other passengers. One can be a graceful waiter. One traveler who was delayed pulled out a book, borrowed a cot and pillow from the airport, and just hummed away happily. Verily, I sense that the best waiters in the world are found in airports, not restaurants.

Oh, I'd write more, but I find myself just blabbering :).

Returning from Belize

I've recently returned from Belize, and I'm personally also in the process of compiling a list of my own thoughts and reflections on the trip. I'll first run through a brief schedule of what we did in our day, and then summarize some lessons I've learned (feel free to skim!).

Our schedule for every day was the following:
Wake up at 5:30am, breakfast at 6:00, devotions until 7:00, and chores till 7:30. We left the mission house to arrive at the construction site at 8:30am, where we would work until 2:30. VBS would last until 5:00pm, when we would return home to eat, do chores, and have some reflection time before going to sleep before 9:30-10:00pm.

To ensure that I don't bore you to tears with rambling, I thought I might highlight some lessons that I've learned:

a) After losing my luggage on the first few days, bearing with concrete floors, malaria infected mosquitoes, ants of every type (vicious too), and cold showers, I think God taught me how to trust Him to provide for me on the most basic level. In addition, being able to borrow clothes, air mattresses, DEET bug spray, and shower supplies, I've learned also that God often supports me often by placing people to labor alongside me.

b) A second theme that I've experienced is the need to slow down in life. Although there are many achievements and projects to strive toward, forgetting to slow down and listen to God plagues my life in America. Sitting with some workers during our lunch break, I realized that the Belizean culture is much more laid back, and they know how to sit around, chat with each other, and pass the time without feeling as if they were accomplishing nothing. That's not to say they are lazy (in fact, some of them built their own houses from scratch!), but they understand how to slow down and relax when needed.

c) A third lesson that I believe will be a continuing struggle is how to respect others as equals in the Lord's eye. While I would like to say I do, I was convicted by my assumptions of construction workers in America as I worked alongside Belizean construction workers (all of them fantastically talented, good-natured, and interesting) as well as supposedly "impoverished" children and teenagers (likewise good natured, intelligent, and disciplined). The way I relegate many people to certain categories without thinking through my assumptions was highlighted.

d) As I prepare to leave for Taiwan, I am overwhelmed by the variety of experiences that God has granted us as a human race. I think about the people I meet in Taiwan and their struggles, and I compare these to people in Belize, in San Fransisco, in Los Angeles, in university. The vast diversity of experience in life has taught me to humble myself, for surely no number of lifetimes can span the infinite variations, and I feel convicted to trust my life in God's hands. He knows what experiences are best for me and how to best use the short time I have in this life.

Ultimately, the greatest lesson I am learning is how to trust in God. As I prepare for more foreign experiences teaching in China over the summer, my experience in Belize has taught me to truly follow after the footsteps of Christ and listen to his bidding.

Sitting in DFW at 1:30am in the Morning

I'm sitting in DFW typing up emails to update friends and family on my trip to Belize, but that's given me precious little time to reflect upon my time of reflection at the Catalina retreat (sponsored by IVCF).

In summary, the week has simultaneously been restful and challenging. After a year of grueling academics, having this time to unwind on the beach, meditate, go kayaking, swim, hike, and have fantastic conversations with people has been refreshing. Going through the latter half of the Gospel of Mark and realizing a) how little I know b) how prideful I am and c) how little I prioritize the things that actually matter has been challenging.

The island faces toward the Los Angeles shore, and in the mornings, it is shrouded in sea mist. A desert island, sparse shubbery dots the hillside mixed in with the intermittent tree. The summer solstice this year also coincides with a (almost) full moon, and we were able to delight in both.

Overall, I'm surprised how intense a week can be when college students are thrown together and told to learn from each other as well as God. The wealth of experiences which are brought to the table (in this case, the seminar room) fosters a profound sense of humility.

In any case, I need to grab an hour or two of sleep before the flight; I'm preparing for the flight up to Belize, and I'll write more about that when I can.

--James

After Finishing a Paper...

The final paper is finally done.

Meeting with people brings intertwined sorrow and delight, reminding me of the ticking clock. Tomorrow will effectively be the final day I'll have on campus.

Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, with its timeless tidal quality, seems to be the correct music for the moment.

Final Moments

Sitting across from the Storey dining room, with the midday sun beating down on campus and a much-too-warm breeze filtering in from outside, I realize that Toi and Irma are cleaning out the kitchen and preparing to close it down for the summer. The clink of forks against ceramic plates mixed with the smell of barbeque chicken pizza: this lunch is the final meal I'm going to have here for a long time.

On Monday, the six T$ sophomores squeezed into Grace's car and went down El Camino to Gombei, a little Japanese restaurant where the majority of us chose Beef Teriyaki. Sharing our summer and autumn plans, the bunch of us have had the strange luxury of being together for two years in a similar context. In spite of the massive changes and oscillating levels of intimacy, to be able to sit in a restaurant sipping water, sharing food, and throwing around little rumors (Kyle dating someone in FCS?) has an ineffably heartwarming feel to it. Frozen yogurt, singing songs (always thinking-for the last time), eating gum. And then back to campus for photographs, more singing, hugs... and each of us parted in our own directions. The last time all of us will be together for a long time.

I just finished the final exam for HumBio, completing a year long sequence. As with SLE, there's a sigh of relief mixed with a sigh of wistful regret. Sitting inside Kresge, the fluorescent lights leaving a slightly off-green tone on the skin, the light outside the window swishing through the leaves, watching everyone take their exams suggests a hidden camaraderie that I find missing in most other classes. That's going to be the final time all of us congregate together in one room: it's an interesting thought experiment to image the sheer degree of talent and fame that many of these peers will achieve.

It's noontime.

Explanations...

I'd imagine every human has in them some variation of an Odysseus complex, a wanderlust, inability to commit, and often asinine hubris and stubbornness that eventually catches us in some "Hephastean net" (is there is even such a phrase). Thrown around by the gods, we soon realize the need for a measure of humility along with tact and daring. I'm preparing in my own way to be challenged and humbled, taught to eschew the egoistic monomania that so accompanies the Odysseus complex.

Like Dante, I'm also "midway upon the journey of my life, finding myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path [has] been lost." While hardly in the same position (I'd hope my path doesn't lead me into Hell), my sophomore year is ending in a way that reveals little toward the future. I seek to find a "light unto my path."

"And as for me, I wait for the Lord."