here’s to a little morning goo
The roads that lead to Shanghai University’s Baoshan Campus — like most roads in Shanghai — are rugged and rutted, part of the continuous and ubiquitous construction project that is trying to transform the former Paris of the East into the Pearl of the Orient. (I’m not sure what they are building, but I am quite sure that whatever it is will very likely be covered in several layers of neon lighting.)
The bumpy bus ride to Baoshan, which I take three days a week, is like regular Rolfing therapy. For 30 minutes each morning, it’s as though somebody put a quarter in the Earth and made the whole world start vibrating.
We rumble through the outskirts of Shanghai, past still-lived-in shantytowns, some so battered that they look like practice targets for bombing raids.
But past the rubble, past the men urinating along the side of the road, are greener pastures — and the employees of Shanghai University mow them regularly.
Each morning, our bus is greeted at the campus gate by women wearing militaristic uniforms — their only purpose, as far as I can tell, is to greet busses at the campus gate. One woman salutes. Another waves us through. They wear nametags with no names. Instead, they are known only as numbers.
The Baoshan Campus is grandiose and impressive, if not a bit antiseptic. Its big white buildings give off more the feel of a large hospital or office park than a place of higher learning.
Just five years ago, none of those buildings existed. Shanghai University — which has anywhere from 20 to 40 thousand students, depending on who you ask — built the entire Baoshan Campus between 1997 and 1999. When the Chinese decide they want to build something, they don’t mess around.
If only everything else about the school were so streamlined. This is not a place for someone who likes to ask a lot of questions. (Unless, of course, you don’t expect any answers. If that’s the case, you will be fine.)
I didn’t learn my class schedule until the first day of classes. On the second day of classes, I learned that my class schedule had been changed. Just getting something photocopied appears to be a process that involves negotiating a lot of red tape. Some of this could be attributed to communication difficulties — several employees in the English department don’t speak English.
I, like the rest of the “foreign experts,” still don’t own an exact semester schedule for the school year. Holidays and breaks seem to be written in pencil. And, I have heard secondhand, the school expects classes missed due to holidays to be made up on weekends, anyway. (Since I have only heard of this policy secondhand, I will continue to act as though it doesn’t exist.)
At school, like the rest of China, asking questions simply leads to more questions. Soon you are drowning in a sea of confusion. It is better, I am learning, to accept things for what they are … even if what they are makes no sense.
This, I have been told, can at least partly be attributed to a trait that many Chinese seem to share in common: An unwillingness to admit that they don’t know the answer to a question.
Take, for example, the following exchange I had with one of the deans from my department. I asked him for information about Shanghai University’s basketball team.
“Oh, very famous,” he said. “Very famous.”
“So, when do they play here? Is basketball a winter sport?”
“Oh, all year round. They play all year round.”
“But when do they play their games? Do they have a set schedule?”
“No.”
The conversation ended there.
Thankfully, in class my students ask most of the questions.
I teach seven classes that meet once a week. Six of my classes are conversational English for freshmen and sophomores. My other class is a graduate level American Literature course.
All of my students are English majors. They have a surprisingly solid grasp of the spoken word … and an insatiable appetite for information about Western culture. And thanks to the Internet, they already know much more than you would imagine (although some of the knowledge seems to begin and end with the Backstreet Boys, or BSB, as they are commonly known around here.)
The NBA has quite a following in Shanghai. In fact, American professional basketball appears to have more of a following in China than it does in Georgia. Which, by the way, isn’t saying much.
One of my students said her favorite player was Allen Iverson. Why? “I think his eyes are very charming.”
Another liked Kobe Bryant: “I think he looks very healthy.”
Then the class turned the question on me: “Dan, who is your favorite NBA player?”
“Aw, you’ve never heard of him,” I replied. “He’s old.”
“Say the name,” a female student insisted.
“Patrick Ewing,” I said. The female student smiled and nodded knowingly.
“You’ve heard of Patrick Ewing?” I said.
“Of course.”
(I should add here that the recent retirement of Mr. Ewing now means that the two favorite athletes of my childhood — the other being Don Mattingly — are no longer active. I am very old.)
The English name one of my students goes by is Jordan … because that’s the English name I gave him. He asked me to give him one. He said he liked basketball. The rest was easy.
Most of my students already had English names. They chose them long ago for reasons that obviously made sense at the time. Some of the names, however, remain a little soggy when put through the Westernized ringer.
For every Jane, Mark, Wendy and Sandy there is a Crosseye, Window, Amigo and Mealing (“I like to eat,” the girl explained.)
In one class, Red sits next to Green. In another, Wind, Rainbow and Rain all occupy the same row.
But one name has all the others beat. Every Monday, I wake up with Morning Goo … sitting in the front row. (I should probably talk to her about changing her name, but I haven’t figured out a way to explain the reasons why.)
My conversational English students are typical college kids. They like music, movies and sports. They spend their free time eating, sleeping and surfing the Internet.
But they are different. My students — more than 90 percent female — appear and act younger than their American counterparts. They seem inexperienced and innocent. Mention “sex” in class and everyone giggles. (If you’ve ever watched an episode of “The Iron Chef,” you know the kind of giggle I’m talking about.)
Still, in every class at least one student will say something that makes me smile … and reach for pen and paper to jot the thought down.
“I think teen pop is shallow,” one girl said matter-of-factly.
In a later class, the same student mentioned that she liked the music I was playing on my iBook prior to class. (If you’re curious, the selections were from Built to Spill, Wilco, Whiskeytown and Modest Mouse.)
“It sounds like the type of music I would listen to while driving,” she said, before adding, “If I ever get a car.”
Cars are rare for college students. They’re rare for anyone in Shanghai, really, except for the very rich.
So everybody on campus rides a bike. Everybody.
Imagine that. Think back to your days in college. What if the homecoming queen or, better yet, the entire offensive line of the football team tooled around campus on Pee-Wee-Herman-style bicycles. Nerds finally get their revenge.
Thousands of students equal thousands of bikes. They are parked everywhere, in long rows that wind around, under and inside the campus buildings. It’s like one big dominoes experiment. Knock down one bike, you knock down a hundred.
It was hard to walk on campus when I first arrived. Bikes attacked from all angles, and I would flinch a lot.
But now, three weeks into this experiment, I am starting to step to the rhythm of the moving masses.
And I flinch less every day.
09.24.2002, 7:25 AM · Observations, School