Qing Wendy

I’m teaching a large number of writing students.  One of the fun things about teaching writing is you really get to know your students well.  When I taught writing to American students, I learned about football and video games, anxiety about growing up and homesickness.  Here I’m learning about issues facing Chinese students on the cusp of adulthood, as well. Over the next few months, I’ll offer some insight through the various papers that I assign.   Each paper is beautiful in its own way, and I’m frequently struck by my students’ strength and motivation. My first paper was called:   Myself: Inside and Out.   To prevent students from telling the traditional tale – name, hometown, high school -- I asked them to first make a list of 25 random things about themselves.   By asking for 25 different things, I was encouraging them to reach deep, beyond their expectations of what I might want.   I then asked them to turn their list into an or...

 So, now let’s jump head from 1000-500 BC to 200 BC.  “Joe’s” dynasty (the Zhou), with all of its beautiful green pots, has gotten fat and complacent.  It expanded, crept east towards the sea.  And suddenly there are signs of a new rebellion coming from Gansu province (which is south and west of Xi’an). Welcome Qin (pronounced “chin”) dynasty!   See, to understand China, you really have to recognize its history as a long, cyclical political game.   A group of people stabilize economically, grow complacent, and then a new group – usually from the west – steps in.   As I daily walk through the thicket of security cameras monitoring my passage, I think that I understand the anxiety and paranoia of the current government.   Rebellions are never good for the people in power. So, who are the Qin?   They were military dudes.   They invested heavily in creating an army that would help unify (or maybe “re-unify”) China.   ...

Once upon a time, a long time ago.   No, a really, really, really long time ago… Buried Pots from the Zhou Dynasty This is going to need to be a theme that I return to over and over again, because each time we visit a site my sense  of history is pushed, pulled and elongated.   And then we then go to another one that is even earlier. Shaanxi History Museum Dave and I went to the Shaanxi Province History Museum today, and it was really worth it.   First, it was raining, so a museum is absolutely the place to be when autumnal storms sweep across the Shaanxi plains.   But it was also really helpful because it wasn’t monstrously huge, like the Met or any other city museum, but it devoted a room to each major dynasty that effected Xi’an, which allowed me to start to put the pieces of the long history together.   The first room was dedicated to the Zhou dynasty and before.   We actually knew about this time period, because, when we were on...

I did my first “English corner” last evening from 8 pm to 9 pm.   “English corner” is where students come to practice English just for fun with a foreign teacher.  This is not a required course.  They just want to improve their English. I had a wonderful time with them!  First, I told them a little bit about myself. Then I had them get into groups of four to discuss various topics.  For example, I wanted to hear about their families, where their parents were born, how their parents met, what attracted them to each other etc. The answers were revealing and some were quite charming.  Many of their parents were born at home.  “There were no hospitals near their village.”  One girl said, “My father was attracted by my mother’s beauty and my mother was attracted by my father’s kindness.”  Her sweet answer showed me she had inherited both.  . I also asked them to tell me why they wanted to learn more English.  Some...

I had my first interaction with the Chinese health care system this past week.   Over about a week, I came down with a bacterial enteritis of some kind.   Chen Li Bin (CLB), our handler here at Jiao Tong was wonderful.  He went with me to the on-campus clinic where a doctor saw me that morning.  I thought maybe I had giardia, but the doctor did not think so.  He figured it was a bacterium and ordered an antibiotic, a probiotic and a Chinese medicine as well.   The visit was very  interesting and extremely cultural.  I told the doctor that I had fever, diarrhea, abdominal pain and no appetite.  He wanted to know if I ate food on campus or at home.  (I had not had any campus cafeteria food.)  He did not ask any questions about my past health, medication allergies, current medications.  There was no physical exam, no taking of vital signs.  The whole visit lasted about 3 minutes and CLB and I went to the cam...

New Temple Old Temple We have been  on break for National Holiday.  A new friend took us to Western Shaanxi province to see his hometown Biaoji and a large Buddhist temple called Fa Men Si.  I think the thing that I wasn’t prepared for was how curious everyone is to get to know an American.  We meet friends through friends, and then those friends want to take us out.  Suddenly we’re having three Chinese banquets in a row. When we visit sites outside of the big cities (like Xi’an), the generosity is compounded.   People want us on their WeChat feed (sort of like Facebook).   Random people want us to be in their family pictures.   They want to give us gifts or water.   Most think that we’re Russian.   When they find out that we are American, they want to film their kids speaking English to us, or sing us an American Song that they learned.   There is a video out there somewhere of Dave and me, and two cute kids sing...