Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

I had to go into the city again today, despite being buried under an avalanche of student papers and outside work. You see, all that work simply isn’t about to get done without coffee. Once in the city, however, I was quickly disabused of my notion that Longhu had been especially smoggy of late: the air in Zhengzhou quickly dried out my eyes to the point of tears.

Another thing I noticed, this on my way back, was when a man on a moped pulled up to a traffic light pole (one that also held a surveillance camera, as is typical here, opened up a panel, and connected a laptop to it. After a few moments of typing, he closed everything up on his way. It’s easy to imagine that he was downloading camera data or uploading alterations to the timing of the lights. However, he wasn’t wearing a uniform which makes that seem a bit unlikely.

Today should’ve been a beautiful day.  Warm enough to wear a thin shirt or even short sleeves but with just that hint of autumn crispness that makes you appreciate the warmth while you still have it.  Or perhaps that hint of cool is a hallucination brought on by the sights and sounds of dried-out leaves.  It should have been a beautiful day.

But it wasn’t.  The air was full of smoke and smog thick as any but the thickest fogs I’ve passed through (and I’ve known some serious fog).  It’s not entirely unusual here in Zhengzhou.  Throat lozenges occupy prominent locations near grocery store cash registers year round because of it.

This is what happens when pollution goes largely unchecked in the name of economic growth, and it’s an important reminder that protecting the environment isn’t so much about ‘saving the Earth’ (barring its physical destruction, it will go on in some form or another regardless of human interventions) but about improving our lives on Earth.  It’s something economic indicators don’t account for, but really what’s the point of these ‘indicators’ if they can’t point to the fluctuations of our happiness?

This evening, one of my students from last year told me that many of the seniors she knows have gone on dramatically restrictive diets– eating a piece of fruit at each meal– in order to improve their chances of finding a job.  Apparently, many employers believe that attractive people represent their companies better and, when it comes to women, attractive means very thin.

The job market for recent college graduates is tight, so for the most part, these young women don’t think about protesting the unfairness of these standards, even when they do recognize how unhealthy restrictive diets can be.  This, of course, goes to show how economic problems can have very gendered.  I also have to wonder about the degree to which the beauty standards involved have been influenced by imported Hollywood movies.

Over the past two weeks, my film classes have been watching The Graduate. I’ve tried to use the movie to help my students gain an understanding of the 1960s in the US and as an introduction to existentialism. (Admittedly, the latter goal was really only in reach of my more advanced students, but I think it’s important to provide discussion topics at varied levels when faced with classes that contain students with disparate skills.) It took a lot more work than I expected to guide my students in the direction of the first goal, however.

In retrospect, I should have anticipated that students who are working towards a middle-class existence would have a difficult time seeing characters who have been given such material comfort as having something to be unhappy about. I had to use specific lines of questioning that focused on looking beyond wealth and possessions. Discussions of particular characters’ motivations, however, were often derailed by arguments about their lack of morality. Of course, confusing analysis and judgment is hardly a uniquely Chinese problem.

One difficult in interpretation that did seem particularly Chinese, on the other hand, came up a few times when discussing the Braddocks’ various parties. A number of my students interpreted them solely as efforts to introduce Benjamin to potential employers.