Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

Part III
Back in the Theatre, and a “Day in the Life” in Baotou

The city of Baotóu is more beautiful than I thought it might be before I arrived! Having read a little on the ravages to Mother Nature throughout China during the “Great Leap forward,” in the 1960s, which led to the chopping down of many trees (and the tearing down of most other wood—doors, tables, chairs) to fuel the production of steel, I was afraid that China might still be sorely lacking in trees and greenery. But happily, if Baotou is anything to go by then China has undoubtedly recovered well. Many of Baotou’s streets are lined with trees and there are also a number of parks and green areas, often with fountains, especially in western Baotou. Baotou means, “land with deer” in Mongolian but nowadays most deer are likely to be encountered only in captivity, in a few of the parks, or on the dinner plate in some of the up-market restaurants. Baotou is split in to two areas, old Baotou in the east and separated by a little space is new Baotou or West Baotou. According to Mr. Zhang, East Baotou is the oldest part of the city and according to my Lonely Planet guide, “while West Baotou has undergone a major facelift, East Baotou remains an unpleasant urban area” (1006). It is true that West Baotou, where the school is located, is the more beautiful, developed, and richer half of Baotou, but East Baotou is now also getting more developed and renovated. Baotou (both parts together) has just under 2 Million people. The guide book also remarks that the people of Baotou are friendly which I can only agree with from my experience thus far (1006). The climate is continental but I think maybe we get less rain here than in northern Europe.
At the end of September the school had a school opening ceremony with speeches by dignitaries, including me, their foreign teacher, and followed by a number of performances where I acted as the English speaking host and Mrs. Gao was the Chinese speaking host. Together we announced each of the acts, one of which was a short rendition of “Amazing Grace” that I sung solo. I'm not sure how much, but parts of the event, at least, were shown on one of Baotou’s TV channels. Everyone here seems to like any song I sing very much but I must say that I am by no means that good of a singer, my singing voice is certainly not good enough for professional means (for example in musical theatre) except perhaps in a chorus line at best, and I can’t read music but I'm quite good at parroting songs I’ve heard and sung along to often enough, if they’re in my limited vocal range. In fact, it seems that the Chinese really like singing and I wish I had learnt more songs before I came here. (This is perhaps also why Karaoke has become such a big hit). The speeches and the performances were at the Children’s Palace’s Theatre and it felt good to be in a theatre again, where my training as an actor became useful. Although, it made me long for the professional theatre scene, like the Diamond Circle Melodrama in beautiful Durango, Colorado, USA, where I had my first (and so far only) professional acting gig through the summer of 2000. Nevertheless, I am enjoying my current stint as an English conversation teacher. In my speech, before the performances, I talked about the importance of English in the world today, since it has become, for better or worse, somewhat of a Universal Auxiliary Language, at least in the realms of business and politics. And I talked about why I came to China; to quote part of my speech exactly, “I have come to Baotou in the spirit of serving the Chinese people and I hope to do so by helping them speak, listen, and understand English better. As a great man {and teacher of humanity} has said: ‘China is the country of the Future… [it] has most great capability.’ I firmly believe this and want to help the people of China make it so.” Although I guess I’ll be narrowing down my efforts to Baotou, at least for now!
One day in class, you might hear me saying, “Here… no, Heeere… no, Heerrrre… no, heh, heh, heee-re… YES, good!” I did not study teaching in college but you could call what I'm doing now “on-the-job training” and I'm sure I'm becoming a better teacher the more I teach. The students are all sweet (to me) and I already have a few good friends among the teachers. I do enjoy teaching, it gives me a good, warm, happy feeling inside when students learn something and progress. Something else I very much like about the New Century Jianghai schools is that they also try to teach the students good moral values (virtues like honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, etc.). I think this is excellent and wish that more schools around the world would emphasize teaching virtues to their students—while they’re not taught here as a subject (at least in Middle and Senior school) I feel that any school that doesn’t somehow teach virtues to its students is sorely lacking in the most important element of a good education! In my High school in Berlin, Germany, the John F. Kennedy, German-American bicultural, School, I remember getting taught virtues in some of my English classes and I want to thank Mrs. Hepner, Mr. Sterling and the others for not leaving out this vital aspect in my educational experience. I don’t know if the virtues were inherent in most or all of the books we read and discussed or were always intentionally being taught to the class but I remember English class as the only one in which any virtues were taught (or perhaps a more accurate word would be emphasized). Baotou New Century (and the other schools) can probably still improve on this element of education but they’re off to a good start! And it makes me happy to teach here, for what better way to help heal a sick world than to help produce healthy, honest, hard-working, kind and happy individuals that can be a radiant energizing light to human society!
The 1st of October is National Day, celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic and in 2001 it coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the lunar calendar), as it sometimes does (every 19 years or so?). For National Day, our school got 8 days vacation. One of the blessings of working in the field of education is that (as far as I know) one gets more vacation then just about any other job! The Mid-Autumn Festival is like Thanksgiving in America, it is a time when families get together and eat good food, like “mooncakes” which, as with the festival itself, celebrate what in America is called the Harvest Moon. I spent the week seeing some movies, reading, spending a little time playing computer games and I visited the homes of Mr. Zhang and Jason (two of the English teachers). I also got to see some of the countryside to the East of Baotou. There is a mountain range that runs east-west to the north of Baotou and can be seen from the city. But I had wanted to get a closer look at the mountains and I was happy that I got the chance on our trip to a lake an hour or two east of Baotou. The mountains are mostly barren and only one of them seemed to have any trees on it but they are still beautiful. I find mountains increase the beauty of a place greatly! Ever since… or especially since my 3 ½ happy years in Colorado I’ve been in love with the beauty of mountains and find flat places (like Chicago) terribly lacking in them and the beauty they provide. Therefore, the mountains are yet another thing I'm growing to like about Baotou. Although I would prefer the longer period of warmth in Nantong or Shanghai these places unfortunately are deprived of the splendor of an interesting horizon of divine, natural beauty! Also, an interesting thing is that I’d been hoping and praying that I’d someday be able to move inland to live in or near some mountains but I did not realize this desire would be granted immediately!
An interesting and unexpected thing I have found out is that many Chinese, like Jason, like Indian, “Bollywood” movies! Therefore, many Chinese are quite familiar with aspects of Indian culture from having watched a number of old Bollywood hits! I guess they’re dubbed into Chinese put presumably (hopefully) the songs are left in the original since songs never dub as well as dialogue. I like Bollywood movies too. Movie songs are India’s pop songs and I like them as well as classical Indian music.
The last day of the vacation I went back to the English Corner at Ba Yi Gongyúan (Eight One Park) and this time I was invited to lunch by some of the regular attendants, 2 young ladies, 5 men and also Jason and his wife were there. Except for one man, who is an English teacher, the rest of them all have jobs that bring them into contact with foreigners in their work environment, and so most of their English was pretty good. I certainly thoroughly enjoyed having lunch with them! And I'm sure they were happy to spend more time with a real native English speaker! Being a foreigner in China is a bit like being a movie star! Everyone stares at you and often people, especially young people, do, or at least really want to, come up to you and practice their English. The number of schools that are able to employ a foreign teacher are limited and so most school kids don’t have the bounty of being able to practice English with a native speaker.
My classes at the Jianghai School were by the Fortnight (that’s two weeks) or, to be precise, 11 days followed by a three day weekend. That might seem intense, at first, to a westerner but it’s really not that bad since I generally don’t have more than 4 (45min) classes on any one day and sometimes only 2 or 3 classes in one day. So I still have enough time to myself to read or write or often I stay at my desk in the Liberal Arts teacher’s office to work on my Chinese. I also make sure to spend time there because it allows me to help students—and teachers—with their English and speak to them and thereby help them practice their English and my Chinese and in other words, socialize, although, that’s limited to the amount that two (or more) people can make themselves understood. In the first couple months my daily schedule was usually something like this:
06:30 –Get out of bed pull on clothes groggily. Go out into the hall and do a round of Taijiquan which usually takes me around 10 minutes. Then go to the bathroom and then say at least one prayer before leaving for…
07:30 –Breakfast
08:00 –Bathroom, shower, read a bit or see what’s on TV for a little bit. Sometimes on the sports channel (CCTV 5), around this time, they have 3 ladies doing a sword-form of Taijiquan, but I'm not sure if it’s Yang Style (my style) or not. But I still like to watch it. Otherwise it’s aerobics or dance or weightlifting (these are all presented in the do-it-at-home-as-you-watch style).
10:10 –I don’t usually have my first class until this time which is most excellent!
11:50-12:30 –Lunch time followed by 2 hours of time for siesta! Whoohoo! One of the greatest things about working in China is Nap Time! In the west it is something most people don’t ever again get upon graduating from Kindergarten but in College, at the latest, I would very much have appreciated having siesta scheduled in to my day! I don’t nap right away though, I usually pray, read a bit of whatever one of the books I'm currently reading is [like my Lonely Planet guide or Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, which is the first novel I read in China. Jason gave it to me and it’s a good book, although I probably would never have gotten around to reading it if I wasn’t living in China! From what I’ve seen here in Baotou so far, it seems the only English books that are readily available here in Baotou are selected English classics, like Tess, or some pulp fiction that I have no desire to read whatsoever.] and then watch the English Language news on CCTV 4. Then I get at least a half hour of sleep in and then often my first afternoon class is the first afternoon class at…
14:30 –One or two classes. And then I often go to the afore mentioned office until dinnertime at 18:00. Sometimes there’s an English Corner for the students from 18:30-19:00. Once a week I have a 19:00 regular class and, since November, on Fridays and Saturdays I have a long Evening class from…
19:00-21:00. At first I was told that it was going to be an adult class, but actually there are children (from outside the school) as well as adults in it. I’ve been told that when it gets bigger it will be split into an adult and a children’s class. But the rest of the week my evenings are free for me to meet friends, read, watch TV, read/write email, study Chinese or write stuff like my “Notes From China”, and do any prep-work for class.
11:00 –Do my Taiji form and then go right to bed “without passing go or collecting 200” . Well, actually, before I turn off the light, I often read a short passage from some sacred writings if I did not do any similar reading earlier that evening.
And there is an average work day in the life of this conversational English teacher (want a job anyone?).