No-nonsense China Expat Blog

So, this is where my blog begins, again. On Lost Laowai [thanks for having me] not so much because it’s what I think of myself, but because it’s what most people assume I am.

I’m just telling it like it is. Life in China. MY life in China.

Last Sunday began way too early, with a praying mantis in my bathroom, a very large praying mantis, and a summons to appear with the other new foreign students at the sports field for a “Welcome Meeting” at 8.30am.

It was drizzling.

I stood at the back of the single row of foreign students while nearly 6000 new Chinese students filled the rest of the stadium: an astonishing number of brand new recruits into Chinese Higher Education, and this is just one university. We turned and watched the raising of the Chinese flag to a regimental marching tune and then dutifully turned back to listen to speeches (made from the roofed and dry stand), of varying lengths, welcoming, encouraging and pressing upon us the need to study hard and study well.

I was thinking: this is interesting considering I know that an entire graduating class of English Major’s last year were not only encouraged by their “professor” to plagiarise their thesis, but were actually told it was the only way they could produce work of a quality good enough to graduate. The possibility of a student not graduating is unthinkable, the blame would lie securely on the shoulders of the professor. Said professor then went on to give classes on how to disguise and edit a thesis lifted from the internet so that it could pass as a student’s own work.

The students must still attend an oral defense of the thesis they haven’t written. I spent a week preparing one poor student to defend a thesis, written by some Canadian, on the works of Charles Dickens. He passed.

Outside at the sports stadium, the weather and speeches continued, the rain was winning, dampening my hair and soaking up the bottoms of my too-long jeans from the wet grass.

10 speeches and 45 minutes later and I was free and off to take the exam which would determine the level of my Chinese ability. Turns out that after over 2 years in China, I am “Elementary” and not “Elementary 2” (E2) but “Elementary 1” (E1). I was to be put in the class with people who had never heard, spoken, written or read a single Chinese word!

I was suitably mortified. But wait… the examiner afterwards said to me that I might find E1 a little easy and gave me one week to choose for myself.

One week later and…

I am in E2. E1 felt like going back to school to learn my ABCs. Spending an hour writing my Chinese name is an insult to even my writing ability. E1 is the ponderous slow train stopping at every station, or sometimes just stopping. E2 is the express waiting for no-one. My Chinese is the worst in the class, but at least I’m learning something.

I bring you the Chinese word for “stool” today – and I’m not talking about the thing you sit on! The textbook doctor was trying to determine whether or not the textbook patient had diarrhea…

Finally, in an extra-curricular effort to help myself, I am beginning a series of translations of popular Chinese songs. I am condensing meaning and form and the result is that sentences like “treetops are emitting stamens” definitely get lost in translation. It’s given me an insight into just how much power the translator has over the original work. I quite like the results (and the power…)

再见

You can listen to the song and see the lyrics (in Chinese) from this site: click here.

The Lonely Season (寂寞的季节)

A breath of wind, the last leaf falls
and my heart drifts with it.
Love is left only in my memories.
Let the next season come.

The trees are full of blossom.
How can I hide my heart
when streets of people are in love.
I walk alone in the warm night air –

I want to move on, leave the past behind,
like the ever-changing seasons.
Yet, I am a little less resolute
in this, the lonely season.

Dazzling sunlight glints on the ocean
and love is brightening the world.
From so far away I can still remember
that same love, that intensity.

Beyond the window the leaves yellow, fall.
My heart is full of such small sadnesses.
I know what it feels like to be in love
so how can my heart be so bare –

I want to move on, leave the past behind,
like the ever-changing seasons.
Yet, I am a little less resolute
in this, the lonely season.

I am walking once more in the cold,
every last light extinguished.
My mind wandering through the past
in this, the lonely season,
still in this lonely season,
always the same in this lonely season.