The People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt 2: Commuwhat?

One of my biggest pet peeves here is hearing people say, “that’s just communism.” I can see where they get the impression. There’s a Stalinist power-structure in place that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party that certainly has Marxist roots, but it has about as much a connection to communism today as the Republican Party has to the ideals of the old Roman Republic. Tenuous, at best. Not even very superficial really. One thing I’ll give credit to The Party for is not pretending to be something it’s not. Doublespeak is not a fixture in Chinese politics. Typically, the leadership says what they mean and means what they say and they say the revolution's dead, folks. They sent the memo in ’78, didn’t you get it?

Mao did create a communist society for a short while. During the Great Leap Forward in ’58 the villages were all leveled and rebuilt as communes. This might have actually worked except that alongside this came the remarkable idea that China was going to match England’s steel production in eight years. Wait, no, 4! Wait! Two years! We can do it in two! Someone said two months? Let’s do it guys! Just melt your shovels, hoes, rakes, plows, and jewelry in backyard steel mills! And then, you know, watch your crops die with thirty million dead peasants following. That's a tenth of the the current US population, by the way.

That didn’t work out so hot and his power slipped a bit. Plan B. Anarchy with communist characteristics. Ten years of it during the Cultural Revolution. Class struggle as defined by neighbors “struggling” against that bastard whose father was a rich peasant or whose brother served in Kuomintang along with your generic book burning, banning anything but revolutionary music, and sending anyone with an education to work as a farmer in the countryside. The general consensus is that it was Mao making a last ditch effort regain power and solidify his historical role as not just The Great Helmsman, but God Amongst Chinamen. Mao died. Happens to everyone, right?

Things changed very, very quickly after that. Deng Xiaoping, probably the most pragmatic political leader I’ve ever read about, came back from his small engine repair shop where he was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. He had a few ideas. The first, and most important today, was that “poverty is not communism.” Maybe sending educated people to the countryside for a few years can have a positive effect after all.

Well… turns out maybe poverty is communism when there’s not a lot of wealth to be shared. What’s a pragmatist to do? Rename communism, that’s what! But what to call it, what to call it… teacher! Pick me, pick me! If you said “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” you won! What does it mean? Well, whatever the hell it needs to mean. That’s its beauty. Did you notice how well the word “socialism” kept the relevance of the “communist” party. Didja also note that “Chinese characteristics” could mean anything? It’s kinda like saying Trey-style Chinese Cooking.

For Deng, it meant two things. Take notes, this well be on the test. First was that “to get rich is glorious.” Hmmm, interesting. That’s a bit of a change from the class-struggling fervor of Mao’s Little Red Book, the only literature allowed only five years earlier. The second was the pragmatic counter-weight, that “some must get rich before others.”

Right there communism died in China and the Chinese Communist Party was given a second chance to prove itself useful to the Chinese people before things got nasty. Nothing but pain came from the previous two decades of rule. While Mao started off on the right foot, The Party and its army was on its best red behavior while running from and fighting off the worse than useless KMT in China’s heartland, he left psychic and physical scars on this nation that will never be healed. Try to find a temple older than your grandfather in this ancient land.

So if China isn’t communist... what is it? That's for Part III: Survivalism.

Some Photos and Captions

Too much text lately, ey? Let's have some photos.

From top to bottom, left to right:

The view from my office. According to my boss, the red buildings on the left side were execution grounds about a century ago. The red keeps the bad spirits away. Behind that building is a massive park centered around Deng Xiaoping on top of a mountain.

We were walking back from Overseas Chinese Town [OCT] after a CouchSurfing meetup. We just got done telling our visitors that Shenzhen, essentially, is a safe city despite its stereotype of lawlessness and crime. Swinging her purse in circles at 2am, however, Cody had it snatched. I got kicked out of the interogation room after snapping this. She spent two hours answering questions like "what was your first pets name?"


A sea turtle. Being "protected" in a Haikou seafood restaurant. Yeah....

We've all heard of the One-Child Policy, right? Well, Pizza Hut in China has a One Trip To The Salad Bar Policy too. 1.3b people. One salad bar. Law and order, peoples, law and order! This is the result.

A group of Vietnamese/Chinese-American businessmen asked me if I wanted to go shopping with them. They took me furniture shopping. Something like $50,000 for this desk. "Wouldn't 1000 year old wood be better in a 1000 year old tree," I asked.

He was in the Chinese Army for years. He was also hit in the head with a pipe. The words "help me" are written on the dent in his bald and dented head. He jams, man. He runs loops through his keyboard by the crosswalk. Easily my favorite beggar.

People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt. 1: My Bias and Observations

This might be taking it too far, but here goes. I'm reading a lot on the subject and really want to express my thoughts. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it here and after talking with a friend in the Party I think I know where the lines are. Here's hoping I still have a visa next week.

Democracy. China. There... cat's out of the bag. Let's chat. For a censor reading this, please note this is an attempt to explain a situation to the Western reader and not some foreigners idea of how to change China.

I'll start with my own bias and ground observations. Liberty, fairness, and responsiveness are more important to me than the tools of democracy like elections. I'm inclined to think that elections are the most efficient ways of delivering those values to the people, but it's not a universal. Hong Kong is a good example of a place that never really had elections through most of it's modern history and today only grants the right to vote to a few millionaires and academics. Hong Kong citizens experience a great deal of liberty, fairness in law, and have an extremely responsive government.

Compare that to a place like Manila where elections are common but so are troops to harass socialist leaning parties wanting to represent the squatters and poor. Corruption is even more rampant in the Philippines than in China. Lonely Planet, in fact, advices backpackers to not report crimes to the police. You'll somehow loose important belongings before you leave their offices. Elections do not cure everything.

Liberty does exist in China in a limited form. People aren't terrified of talking politics and dissing old leaders like Mao in private. I've heard people in very high positions tell me they're not a member of The Party because they "don't believe communism will be actualized." Where it stops is the right to go into the street with a big sign that says that. Or march on Tiananmen Square. Or try to convince people of your ideas in public forums. There are no North Korea-style microphone systems hidden in people's homes that send the Gestapo in to throw you into re-education camps for bringing up your ideas inside your home or even office.

Fairness and responsiveness are two things the government in Beijing openly discuss and the leaders frequently cite as major policy goals. They know theres a fire brewing in the countryside and they know that it poses the greatest threat to the future of The Party. The cities are content if not happy as a whole. There's education, health care, jobs, and smart people can potentially make a much better life for themselves. None of that can be said of the countryside. Instead they deal with rampant corruption and stagnant incomes while the coastal cities boom.

Corruption isn't just about having to pay off the local cop to get out of a traffic ticket. It's about having your small plot of land appraised at a certain value. The developer gives the local government the appraised amount to buy the land from the farmer. The farmer maybe gets ten percent of that appraised amount, then the land is resold for tens or even hundreds of times more than the appraised amount [of which the farmer only got the sliver of]. This happens all day, every day. Add to this steep taxes on produce that are only now being revoked and you have a land of very edgy farmers that have been known to tear apart government offices.

Officials reported 74,000 demonstrations, or "mass incidents," in China in 2004, up from 10,000 in 1994, with the number of participants rising to 3.8 million from 730,000. - UPI

What's happening now is Beijing knows this problem needs to be addressed but there's no clear solution to it. The corruption isn't necessarily happening because of bad people in administration. It's happening in large part because bureaucracies are both bloated and underfunded. The previous president tried subsidizing rural administration payrolls and quickly learned it would bankrupt the national government. Cutting back on the bloating has serious political consequences within the party, as it creates more work and removes layers of separation between cadres and the unruly peasants.

Limited democracy had been one of their approaches. Contrary to popular belief, there are some relatively free elections in China to small assemblies for townships. Even non-Party members can run and often win. In effect it's giving a blow-off valve to the most disaffected without seriously disrupting power structure. It gives voice without much authority. And

Best Friends Forever

I don't know if it's the language or the culture, but the concept of friends is much different here than in America. I present to you, the reader, three examples. The first was last week when I was riding the bus to class. I was tired. I was grumpy. I wanted my nap to be a little longer. I'm still not used to having 8am classes. In the midst of my radiating grumpiness the lady behind me wanted to strike up conversation. I was browsing through a Chinese language book and she wanted to confirm that that's what I was studying. I agreed and went back to reading. Fifteen questions later her stop was coming up and she wanted to exchange numbers. This is very, very common. She asked, "You and me - Friends?" I reluctantly agreed and had to spent the next day ignoring her phone calls. I take Brian's line. If the only reason they're interested in you is because you're white, they're not worth much time.

Case two. I found an alternate Muslim noodle shop the other day. I love Muslim food but my local shop is relatively expensive, so I've been on the lookout for cheaper places. I found it. When I finally ate there, I spend the next twenty minutes being baraged with half-English/half-Chinese questions while I ate. My more-than-subtle body language of turning to face the wall didn't work. My new friend, who would be mistaken for a coke feign anywhere else on the planet that actually had drugs for poor people, still kept asking questions and doing weird things - like putting his hot sauce on my table despite the fact that I already had [and was using] the exact same sauce. I had the pleasure of being chased down and screamed to in a crowded alley when he saw me pass by tonight. He had his own little street-food stand selling bakery goods and I tried to buy a small cake, but had to force money into his friends hand. He really was trying to be friendly, but man... come on.

Case three. Eating a table with a stranger is common here. If a restaurant is full, you find a table with a roughly equal number of empty seats as people in your party. Thus, you and a friend can sit at another table with two strangers. I can sit at a table with another loner, like I did tonight. it began well. We shared our dishes and conversed a bit in Chinese. We even split a beer at the end of the meal. He wanted my number. It's normal, so I gave it to him. This is an aspect of Chinese culture I just don't get. We have very, very obvious communication difficulties. We barely made it out of whether we had girlfriends or wives, which part of town we liked, where we were from, and what our respective jobs were. What in the hell could we possibly talk about on the phone? I gave it anyway. I spent the rest of the night answering texts with him ascribing us to be brothers. I replied that no, we were new friends. Not brothers. I received only silence. Somewhere in the Middle Kingdom a heart broke.

* * *

I do have Chinese friends here that aren't part of the company. It took a long awhile to acquire them. We hang out the same way I hang out with friends back home. I go over for a few beers, maybe watch TV and complain about work or women or the weather. The fact that I'm a foreigner means little to them anymore, at least compared to almost everyone else. I might not call them every night [largely because the words "I really need to get home" mean nothing before 11:30 at night to them] but we enjoy each others company because our personalities mesh. They get to practice English, which they like, and I get to practice my Chinese. It's nice. They've even flipped my own sense of humor around on me. They were there for me when Hera needed to go to the hospital and I'm there for them to provide American music other than John Bolton and Michael Jackson. After all, what are friends for?

The American Dream

Things made a bit more since today after having a class with a group of teachers and later with a group of principals with the same topic of conversation. What are the differences between American schools and Chinese schools? I begin by having them participate telling me what they imagine American classrooms looking like. Universally, they sounded like this:

• In American classes, students lounge around on the floor during classes.
• At most, there are 20 students per class.
• American students are more talkative in class, but that's to ask deep and penetrating questions.
• American students and teachers are always great pals.
• American classrooms are "more open," meaning few if any rules.
• American classes are extremely fun, involving lots of games.

More importantly, they all - every one of them - unhesitantly believed American education was better. An example was a principal who told me that 20 years ago educational scholars from China visited America and American scholars visited China. Both teams came to the conclusion that they well disciplined Chinese classrooms were better and the undisciplined American classrooms were worse. In those 20 years, however, no Chinese citizen has won a Nobel prize while Americans have won many.

With that, what we're doing out here makes since. I've often complained about feeling like the foreign teachers are expected to be English-speaking clowns. Come in, play games, make the kids have fun and love English and like magic the language will sink in. Disciplining children is not allowed. What we're doing, it seems, is recreating the Chinese image of the American classroom setting. They want us to come here and do to their students what they think was done to us. They want that magic spark that we were given to rub off on the next generation of Chinese.

Unfortunately, this image of the American classroom is incorrect. While Montessori schools and small private schools do exist, they are rare and most American students endure something very similar to the Chinese classroom.

While most American teachers would love the conditions that Chinese people are describing, the apathy and attitudes of American students prevents it from being a reality. I often corrected their notion of a rules-free zone by outlining each behavior associated with Childhood - horse playing, running, touching - that American teachers spend an extraordinary amount of time preventing for liabilities sake. Thus American teachers daydream of complicit and obedient [and imaginary] Asian classrooms where students want to learn and beg for three hours of homework a night.

In coming days and weeks I want to look at this issue more deeply. I want to more clearly identify, by the numbers, where the strengths of the Chinese classroom are and where the strengths of American education are. I'd also like to explore the idea of why, despite the huge number of science graduates in China, there have been no Nobel Prizes.

McWorld

Exploitation: Taking advantage of an individual or situation for one's full benefit. It often has a negative connotation to it.


I'll admit to succumbing to the KFC down the street a few times a month when I'm pressed for time, but there's a lot of guilt involved in paying twice as much for less tasty food that's twice as expensive. A typical value meal at KFC is about 23元, 230% more than much tastier and fresher Chinese fast food. It's almost always packed for dinner and lunch. I assumed that because of the higher prices, they'd also be paying higher wages. Of course, I was wrong.

The claims first surfaced in a report by the local newspaper New Express Daily, which said its reporters... found that McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut were paying part-time staff as much as 40 percent less than the minimum wage for Guangdong. Minimum wages vary from region to region in China. The minimum wage for Guangdong province is 7.5 yuan ($0.97) per hour.The New Express Daily report said McDonald's was paying part-timers only 4 yuan ($0.52) per hour. It said part-timers at KFC earned as 4.7 yuan ($0.61) and Pizza Hut 5 yuan ($0.65).
Washington Post

There excuse wasn't that they weren't paying that low a salary, they were merely confused by just how low they could pay people:

"This was caused by a newly introduced regulation. We are working with the government to seek clarification of these laws," it said. "Yum has always strictly adhered to Chinese laws and regulations."

To be fare, it is almost assured that every restaurant in my neighborhood pays below minimum wage. In many ways China offers one of the freest markets on the planet, and the supply and demand curve for all labor - skilled and unskilled - is clearly in the employers favor. Even with connections into a family or friends business, a college graduate might only expect nine or ten RMB per hour. That comes out a little over $220 for six days a week of work. For the 工人, the workers, it's relatively well documented that the minimum wage often acts as a ceiling to the amount you can make in a week. The pay difference then amongst workers is how many hours you have to work, uncounted, to get it.

Yum! Brands and McDonald's clearly can afford to pay higher wages without significantly cutting into profits. It's a niche market and their restaurants are always packed. So why should it take a part timer almost five hours to buy one value meal. It would take an hour just to buy a single egg tart, nearly two hours for a cup of coke.

Bottom line: Western-run companies shouldn't try to cheat the infantismal Chinese minimum wage. That's low on too many levels.

Yellow Smocks

Before I went to Amsterdam I'd never seen a prostitute before. Well, I have a memory of a prostitute coming and putting her leg on our families rental car when we were in Miami in '93, but that's just too weird to have really happened. In Amsterdam they were more like zoo exhibits than anything else. They were presented as tourist attractions. I'd never seen one in her natural habitat though.

Even on the famed Emerson and Phillips intersections in Jacksonville, which I once lived not too far from, I never saw one. Ever. Everyone said they there with the crack dealers but I never saw them either. I think my parameters of "normal human behavior" are just too wide to spot someone dressed eccentric enough to scream, "approach me for solicitation of sex and drugs."

Everyone claimed that the late nigh barber shops in Tianjin were all sin dens, but every time I looked while driving by they were doing legitimate business. But Shenzhen. Wow. Different story. Obvious isn't even the word. Apparently, we compete with Thailand on the sheer numbers of women coming to look for work and deciding the indentured servitude at a factory just wasn't what they had in mind when they left the farm.

Within a five minute walk I could count at least ten businesses of scandalous intent. Juries out on what they really are, precisely, but they're neon lit establishments with big glass windows with couches overflowing with bored young girls in short white dresses. There's always one booth for cutting hair and not a single customer. For that matter, I've never seen anyone coming into or out of one of these places. They're just kinda there. Existing.

Though prostitution is against the law, I've never seen a crackdown on the brothels like I've seen with street vendors [or reporters, or...], so it came as some surprise to read this in an article about prostitution in China in the International Herald Tribune today:

At the end of November, officials in Shenzhen, the southern boomtown, got the bright idea of reviving the Cultural Revolution for the purposes of temporarily cracking down on its prostitutes.

This came to pass as a face-preserving measure after a regional television station broke with decorum by mentioning the existence of this industry in a city famous throughout Asia for its sex trade.

To send the message that Shenzhen was actually a clean and proper place, the police dressed several dozen prostitutes in identical yellow smocks and marched them through the streets of Futian district, to be shamed by a jeering crowd and have their names and hometowns announced to all.

What's even stranger is no one I know had any idea this happened until we read about it on international websites. The news here is strictly "happiness abides," so things like this rarely get reported. Curious though, ey?


Tags: Treyopia current events news prostitution Shenzhen China Chinese Asia Cultural Revolution persecution

Mahjong Cops

My 200th post :-) I've been writing seriously* for three years now. Dig around the archives if you'd like. Everything prior to July '06 are op-ed pieces written for the Spinnaker [my college newspaper] or the Folio Weekly [Jax alt weekly]. Mainly just liberal ideas I tried to present in conservative clothing with varying degrees of success. Everything since July has been my experience in China.

Thanks for reading.

* lol
____________________________________

So as soon as I figure out how to get money out of my credit union and into my Chinese bank account I'm going to buy a new Sony Ericsson camera phone with a 2mp camera. I had my old phone stolen/lost and I'm not taking nearly enough pictures with my bestial FZ-30. I'm used to taking landscape photos. I'm really just too big of a coward to walk up to a stranger and start snapping away while they're at work cooking or begging. Cell phones are so omnipresent here that I can snap away fairly incognito.

What I would have taken a picture of today [and likely lost my new investment] would have been the 25-30 police officers we saw marching in formation down the street as we were scouting for caramel bananas. I went Chinese and jumped across a busy street to follow them. Sixty of my closest friends followed suite. Rubbernecking is a national sport here. It's high entertainment watching a firetruck pass and then see 300 Chinese running after it.

The cops turned a corner into a big alley and broke into a trot. All of them had their special batons in hand: short metal pipes with flattened wedged edges for a bruising whack on the flat side and a bloody whack with the edge. The only people that carry guns are the guys who bring cash to and from banks. They also have flak jackets and a real armored vehicle. Like one I'd feel safe driving through Baghdad in. They carry shotguns, which I suppose is the weapon of choice for mowing down cash-starved crowds. I've repeatedly been told to stop making hand gestures at them suggesting that they want to shoot the foreigner.

Back to the cops.

The turned another corner and sprinted into a small alley and began piling into an apartment building. By this time everyone who could possibly see what was going on had piled up to watch them. Easily 150 people, with me at the forefront. In fact, when they broke into the trot I was told to back off by a sergeant I hadn't seen. I waited to see what what happen... but nothing was immediately apparent. I walked back to Hou Li and asked her what happened. She wouldn't ask anyone and we walked off at her insistence. Being the alley rat that I am I walked us in a complicated circle right back to the scene of the crime.

I begged Hou Li to ask someone what happened. She blushed and refused but kept walking with me back to the scene of the crime. I took matters into my own hand, "nay ga sh she ma?" [not pinyin, but translates to "this is what?"]. An older man told us the story... turns out it was an illegal gambling den of high stakes Mahjong. Apparently the cops likely went in, took the cash, and left. Go figure.

Walking home later I saw another great photo-op and a first for me - I present you with the mental image of a paddy wagon bus. A full-sized city bus with lights-a-blazing [cops always leave their lights flashing here] and a cage fitted inside. It was about half full. Guess some people didn't make enough at the Mahjong table that night.


Tags: Treyopia stories current events cops police China Chinese law gambling weapons mahjong mahjongg

Chinese Ratings

Inspired by the Book of Ratings, and in desperate need of new material besides short stories and photos to post, I present...

The China Book of Ratings

Fengyoujing
I must confess that I don't know what exactly it is, but I suspected it involves concentrated menthol. It's green, it's cheap, it comes in oddly shaped bottles, it's Chinese traditional medicine. It acts as mosquito repellent, headache cure, and an agent to awaken the user. Apply on temporal lobes, forehead, and underneath your nose. If you're lucky, a little bit will get in your eye and it won't exactly hurt, but you'll be more alert than your last cappuccinos. Bottom line: I like smelling a little minty when I'm not feeling so fresh. A-

Baijiu:
Chinese grain alcohol. Imagine the worst qualities of gin and Everclear mixed together. Imagine this being the national drink of China. Imagine it being so powerful and foul that you can still taste it in a cup that's been washed. The mere smell of it puts this college veteran out of service. You see businessmen tearing it up during lunch for sport. Bottom line: National drink? Try again. F


Chinese Wine:
Great Wall, my preferred brand, is about on par with your typical $7 bottle back home. Except that it costs 32 RMB / $4. I've tried spending a little bit more for aged Cabernet, but it was hideous. For about 60RMB / $7 you can find an excellent bottle of cheap French wine. I've found that if you drink it out of a dixie cup instead of a wine glass, expectations drop drastically enough that you begin tasting the delicate fragrance of strawberry and perhaps a dab of lavender. Bottom line: there's no reason not to find a bottle of French wine. C-

The Chinese Language:
"Car water horse dragon." Is this a sentence to you? No? It is for 1.2 billion people. It means that there are so many cars on the road that it looks like a horse trying to cross a river that is shaped like a dragon. No, you're not going insane. There were no verbs. There was no subject, no object. Just four nouns. Add to this that it is a tonal language. The word "ma" means five different things, it's all in how you say it. You could be asking a question, talking about your mother or even marijuana. The written part is worse. It's non-phonetic. Every single character represents a syllable. Every one. There are 5000 plus characters. It's even worse in HK and Taiwan. A curious idea, sure, but you know what would be really handy with the most precise oral language ever devised? Cues on how to speak it by looking at the word. Bottom line: Mao was on the right page when he thought about replacing characters with pinyin. "A" for creativity, "F" for sticking with it for 4000 years. F

Tags: Treyopia China Chinese ratings book of ratings baijiu wine Fengyoujing traditional medicine language characters

Chinese Wedding

My roommates description of a Chinese wedding...

I accompanied two friends to a Chinese style wedding this past weekend. I figured, why not go? I've never been to a Chinese wedding and I haven't seen my friends in awhile. The bride is Chinese and the groom is actually British. He doesn't understand a word of Chinese and the bride's guests don't do so well with English.

There was free wine and beer. Everyone was drunk before the event even began.

So, the ceremony, if you will, was conducted by two friends of the bride, half in Chinese, half in English. The happy couple were then asked to exchange something like vows. The bride give a heartwarming speech about how she met this fat, ugly, boring Englishman and fell in love with him...awww isn't that sweet. Then the groom's turn. He explains how he couldn't stand the bride when they met. He thought she was bossy and annoying....but he loves her! awww

Then for the dinner. The groom goes around to every table (about 8 of them with 10 people each) and does bottoms-up with every person. His face was the color of the red wine by the time he got to our table.

The dinner was followed by "games". These included a line of females and the groom, blindfolded, had to feel each one and guess which was the bride. You'd think it would be easy to tell which one was wearing a wedding dress but, he was so far gone he had no clue.

The rest of the evening is a blur. (not because I was drunk. No, I was quite composed. But because everyone else was so drunk and off the wall that I couldn't keep up with everything that was happening) Let's see, the groom tackled the bride and they were rolling around on the floor, the groom decided to chew out a work colleague for acting above everyone else at work (I thought I saw a fist fight coming), and the bride, who knows why, got angry and started to smash plates on the floor. She then took a large knife, slashed her wedding cake in half, threw the knife against the wall, and stormed out.

As entertaining as this was, I thought it was a good time to leave.

tags: Treyopia China Chinese weddings weddings stories short stories

Robot vs. Tweaker Methods

At some point this week I decided that it was easier being robot than a foriegn English teacher. I was getting too serious and too frustrated with a group of third graders who wouldn't stop talking while I was teaching. Honestly, I don't rightfully have the skills to teach kids that young. It's too early for all-English classes. It's hard listening to a teacher who speaks half gibberish no matter how much you want to learn. This biomechanical transformation was one of two methods that worked this week.

The first method was acting like tweaky Jim Carry on meth. As soon as the Chinese teacher left I'd say my standard, "Good morning, class!" They'd respond plenty loud, but then I'd stand on a chair and yell it. I'd yell it again trying to scream louder than they could. I had their undivided attention. I'd then hop off, write a category on the board like "food" or "animals." I'd then run around picking students whose hands were shot a mile high. "Cat," they'd say. "CAT!!!!!!!" I'd yell back while giving an enthusiastic and exaggerated high-five crouched down to their little seats. If I was really into it I'd give a psychedelic meow or two.

"Hot Dog!"

"HOT DOG!!!!!!!!"

High-fiving and fake vomiting follows.

The Tweaker Method works perfectly with the little tykes excerpt for two issues that emerge after class. I lost my voice and energy. Out-screaming and out-crazying 9 year olds saps a 25 year old pretty quickly. I'd go into my next class with all the enthusiasm of Ben Stein.

I was going around the room asking them easy questions and I could barely hear the answers under the dull roar of laughter and talking of other students. I couldn't speak over them because my voice was gone. I couldn't dance about acting out "MONKEY!!!" because I didn't have any energy. Getting angry wasn't working. That's just loud and mean gibberish. So I decided to be a robot.

I walked to the other side of the room. I stared at the class. They shut up and stared back. I extended my arm forward making the high-pitch mechanical grind similar to an electric drill. Every move was slow, deliberate, and accompanied by it's own whirring.

They were transfixed. I pointed my finger and asked, "What. Is. Your. Name." in the best monotone android voice I could muster. "My name is...!!!" followed by a squeal of laughter.

When a kid in some distant corner would start talking I'd gun him down with my robo-pencil machine gun and he'd fall over dead on his desk and shut up for a bit. The other kids would giggle and quietly make their own robo-sounds. I was even able to shut the whole class with one swipe of my robo-pencil gun.

It works. I highly recommend the Robot Method to other TEFL teachers with classes to young to know what's going on.

Tags: Treyopia stories China Shenzhen TEFL teaching EFL ESL TESL methods English Chinese children elementry school

Xinjiang Food

It's a little known fact in Islamic history that when the Archangel Gabrielle gave Mohammad the words to the Koran he also gave him some killer recipes. It was pretty lonely up on that desert mountain and Mo was always, always hungry. During breaks between holy scripture sessions Gabrielle would light a cigarette, the mood would relax, and he'd start passing off recipes to his Arabian friend.

"When you get back to Mecca, try taking about a three pound big chunk of dough, chip it and then steam it for five minutes, then...."

Mo, though extremely tired from writing out the Qur'an almost every waking hour, would hurriedly jot down the recipes. He knew there was a wisdom and beauty in them that would pacify men's hearts for generations to come.

More would come everyday, "k... now get some mutton and put it on a sharp wooden stick and grill it with some of that pepper sauce I told you about on Wednesday."

After many cold nights and wretched hot days up on that sacred mountain, it was time to go back and spread the message. Gabe said, "got everything, man?"

"Yeah, yeah... blanket, clothes, rice, and food that will make the world smile," Mo shot back with a grin and a rucksack slung over his back.

"What? Where's the Qur'an?"

"That manifesto you've been having me write? Ohhhh, that... it's good stuff, Gabe, but I just don't see a market for it... and I think these dishes will civilize the hearts of men. It is the seventh century, and ya know... not a lot of my fellow Arabs can, you know, read."

The Archangel Gabrielle unleashed his fury. Mohamed understood. The recipes were great, but the book was more important.

Mo did a good job. He founded the religion Gabe wanted him too and he spread the recipes to new converts while taking hookah breaks from battle, "... now take the beef - and remember, NO PORK! - and marinate it in some..."

Millenia later, thousands of miles away from the holy lands, Muslims found themselves in China. They set up small resteraunts with the charm of a hometown diner in Kansas and serve noodles that could unite all men under the green banner of Islam if only the Archangel had allowed him to push those noodles and kababs instead of the book.

The point of this little thing is that I moved apartments today. I'm back in Sino-Heaven. Though the Tianjin-style kababs are still ellusive, there are Pakistani men selling sheep kababs and little noodle shops dotting the streets. I spent an hour getting lost walking transfixed through all the markets yesterday. I love it.

And thank you, Angel Gabe, for those killer recipes you gave Mo outside Mecca so many years ago.



I made sure Betsy had some Muslim noodles before she goes home Monday. The soup on the right is incredible [as you can tell by the empty dish closest to the camera operator], as is the little pickled salad dish.



Tags: Treyopia Shenzhen China Islam food culture Muslim