Qing Wendy

Since November 9 th I have been teaching a class called “American Society and Culture” to about 30 English minors.   Their majors are mostly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields.   Several are majoring in clinical medicine.   The class meets for three and a half hours on a Saturday afternoon, from 2:00 PM to 5:30 PM.   Prime napping time!   Can you imagine being in a class that long?   How about teaching one?   These students seem to be in class all the time. I was a little concerned when the department asked me to teach this course.   I am a medical doctor, not a sociologist nor anthropologist.   I decided I better learn something and so got to work.   I found a useful, readable book on Kindle called “What Foreigners Need to Know About America From A to Z” by Lance Johnson.   It has many useful tips and I decided to incorporate them into my class.   In addition, I wanted to find out what my students wanted to know about America.   I had to find ways to keep th

Some of you have asked about air quality:  It has gotten worse since they turned the coal fires  on to heat the city!  Here is a view from my classroom Up until now, I’ve been teaching the Writing Majors.   They have been quite impressive: working hard and showing off their talents in English.   Their class ends this week, and I begin teaching the writing minors.   This is a very different group.   Some of them are excellent.   They’ve traveled. They are talented students who majoring in the hardcore sciences – so curious and smart.   Some, unfortunately  want to minor in English for the cred that it brings in business or the educational setting, but either don’t have time or don’t want to put in the time that it will take to do well.   The class meets once a week on a Saturday morning.  (Weekends mean nothing in China. I suppose that I should give them all credit for being willing to get up at 8:30 and take a class with me that lasts from 8:30 to 12.)   But many of them do

I am working with two fourth year English majors, Bonnie (Zhou Qi) and Ming on their essays for a writing competition that will take place next month in Beijing.   Both of them have passed the initial phase of the competition and I am helping them with the subsequent essays.    Thus far, we have worked on two sets of essays. The first was an argumentation essay and today's was a narrative essay. It is fascinating to see how they deal with the prompts they get for these essays.    Today’s prompt:   It is the year 2039 and Lin, a brilliant, but a bit emotional computer programmer is vying for a position at a top tech company.   In this dystopian world, humanoids (computers) have become so advanced they have taken many high-tech jobs away from human beings.   In the students' essays, they imagine a coding competition between Lin and the humanoid competitors.  Both students offered a pessimistic outlook, imagining that the human loses to the computers.  In their w

Every job has its pain.   This week I had my share. Doris, one of the English professors at Jiao Tong gave me the task of editing a 100-page book, originally written in Chinese.   One of the English department translation professors made a stab at translating it into English. I was excited initially, as I thought it could be interesting. I was asked to identify grammatical errors as well as point out sections that I did not understand. I was dismayed to find the whole book nearly incomprehensible!   It is about the history and development of the political, economic and social relationship between Algeria and China, but it has no identifiable thesis and its audience was unclear until I called Doris.    She told me the book is to be part of a series of books about China and Africa and how China has been supporting developing nations there.   I pointed out serious flaws in the text including 1) lack of footnotes and complete references, 2) poorly worded and often incom

I haven't yet written about daily life.  This might be a good time to do it.  Let's start with food! Most of the time, Dave and I go out to eat.  Restaurant eating is extremely inexpensive.  A large plate a dumplings costs about 10 yuan (30-cents). A bowl of soup costs about 12 yuan. However, there are times when you feel like eating in.  The grocery store is two blocks away. It has lots of staples -- bread, fruits, vegetables.  Fewer meat options -- one or two types of fish, chicken legs and wings, and some sort of meat that might be beef or might be pork.  Not sure.  A whole aisle is taken up with oil and soy sauce.  Another aisle for rice. Eggs come in cartons... and also this cute little basket. Egg custard cups The second floor of the grocery store is the expensive floor -- gifts of all sorts and foreign imports -- cereal, peanut butter, danish butter cookies.  The food that we miss most is chocolate and cheese.  There is food that looks like chocolate, but unf

Last Friday, Dave and I were asked to judge a singing competition.   It was sort of “China’s Got Talent” moment, hosted by the Foreign Language Students.   The rules were the students had to sing in a language that wasn’t their native language.   There were 16 competitors.   They all sang one song.   We voted.   Then there was a second round where 10 were eliminated and so we only had to listen to 6 in the second round.   They were supposed to sing a song in a different style in the second round, although I’ll be hard pressed to figure out what constituted a “different stye.    Ariana Grande? Rihanna?   I guess that’s a different style. The students sang in Italian, Japanese – but most sang in English. I wanted to reward the student who sang the Italian love song, but it was pretty awful.   The winners were quite good.   One sang Rihanna’s “Diamonds” – which I think is a very hard song to sing and carry off.   She had great presence, and made it her own.   Second place was a d

I had my first Chinese dental experience today.   It had been about 6 months since my last dental cleaning and I could feel my teeth needed attention.   One of the foreign teachers who had had extensive dental problems told me about this terrific dental office, the Wenxin clinic.   I was nervous both about getting there as well as wondering what the experience would be.   I was planning to use the ride hailing app, Didi, that is very popular here.   As I was calling it up, a taxi appeared.   I figured, why not just take the cab and avoid the hassle of finding the Didi.   The driver was very friendly.   The whole trip, about 15km, cost about 30 yuan or about $5.00.   I told the driver I had never been to the clinic before and he took the time to point out where it was located.   Nice guy! The dental clinic was spacious, friendly and all around wonderful.   I was an hour early for my appointment.   The staff didn’t speak much English, but I felt comfortable with everything usi