Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

Today three of my students turned in nearly identical papers.  One of them only included about a third of what the other students’ did and was handed to me several minutes into class by another one of the students.  If the handwriting hadn’t been different on every copy, I would suspect the student who handed it to me of going so far as to transcribe each copy.  This student, incidentally, is one of those who thinks that using “big words” makes him an advanced student, even though he fails to use them accurately or to use the simplest grammatical structures correctly.

Unfortunately, since other students don’t know these terms, they believe that he’s more advanced than they are.  It seems likely that the other two students believed that his work was better than anything that they could produce.  In fact, this tripled paper is the only one of those I’ve read so far to completely miss the point of the assignment.  I asked for a synopsis; they gave me a character description.

To be honest, I found this whole thing a bit insulting.  Did they honestly believe that I wouldn’t notice?  Perhaps they suspect that foreign teachers don’t actually read their assignments.

Of course, it could have been much worse, but it’s somewhat troubling to return from a bumpy flight and discover that the turbulence was related to a typhoon, even if it was far enough away that there was no real danger. At any rate, I’ve made it back to dull, dusty Zhengzhou after a week in glittering Shanghai.

Shanghai, however, is like a cheerleader: beautiful but, ultimately, soulless. And it really is gorgeous, especially at night. The view of the Bund from Pudong ranks as my top cityscape, with the reverse not far behind. On the Bund, they light up the buildings colonial powers left behind, while Pudong’s towers clearly show that it was built up within the last decade, though the Oriental Pearl carries a hint of ’50s-style futurism with its pink-by-day orbs. (Pictures will be on Flickr once I’ve had the chance to fuss with the colors.)

I did see some intriguing art in the galleries on Mongashan Lu, but most of the better work was by artists from Beijing or abroad.  Moreover, the objectification of the female form was rampant and, in some cases so extreme that it made me queasy.  Headless, twisted figures seemed almost tame in this regard.

It’s strange to think that it’s Sunday night.  Afterall, I taught three classes today and two yesterday.  Because the National Day holiday that begins tomorrow only lasts three days officially, the college has us teach our Thursday and Friday courses the weekend before our seven-straight free days.  Given that each class meets once  a week, however, the result is that those classes that meet on Thursday and Friday end up getting ahead of the others– which is irritating when you teach multiple sections of the same course.  And, of course, a seven-day week is long for students and teachers alike.

So I didn’t teach real lessons this weekend.  I showed my movie classes a silly movie with little discussion (though I did tell them to pay attention to the slang), and I gave my senior functional composition classes a quick-and-dirty creative writing workshop.  I was surprised to find that they lost interest in the fiction-writing portion after the pre-writing steps, though my demonstration of an earthquake as an inciting force startled them to attention.

With the poetry, they were intimidated at first (which I expected), but by the end, some of the less-skilled students wrote passable cinquains (and volunteered to share them).  The procedure I followed to  achieve this result was remarkably simple.  First, I had them brainstorm nouns, verbs, and adjectives related to a topic.  Then, I introduced the syllabic form by writing out the first three lines and then illustrating how a word list could be used to generate the conclusion.

Anyway, I’m off to Shanghai in the morning, so don’t be surprised if posts are minimal to nonexistent until Sunday night or Monday morning.

On October 1st, China celebrates its national day, the anniversary of the founding of the “People’s Republic”.  (Here I have to note that I find it very strange that whenever I see the characters for people on a sign, it means that it has something to do with the government.  I mean, if what that would seem to imply were true, it would be grand, wouldn’t it?).  For most of my students, however, the main thing to celebrate is the week off from school– a chance to return home or to focus on studying for qualifying exams.

Last night, I was one of a few teachers invited to represent the university at a National Day reception at one of Zhengzhou’s nicer hotels.  Besides various “foreign experts” as we’re called, there were numerous local politicians– with the provincial governor, regional military commander, and various representatives of “overseas Chinese” seated at the head table.  Note that when they were introduced, the individuals from Hong Kong, Macau, and “Taiwan Province” were not included in this category.

All guests were given small sprays of purple flowers, and a folk music ensemble from a local university played throughout.  White-gloved waitress kept glasses and plates full.  This was all in strong contrast to our local Longhu restaurants where you don’t eat anything you drop on the table (unless you see them put down new plastic wrap right before you sit down).  It gave me a new context in which to understand why some of my students asked me, last week, if I had any special privileges growing up because my father worked for the city government.

Of course, to be fair, it’s worth noting that, in the US, people whose parents are high up in certain corporations grow up with material and other privileges.  I’m not about to say that’s any better (but then, in today’s China, there are similar benefits for business people).