Week 9: Incarceration! or, Basic Buddha Beliefs

Well this has been one hell of a week.

I hit some of my lowest (emotional) lows, and also achieved some of my (literally) highest heights this week.

At work this week, the oral classes began. This is the final set of classes with which we are responsible for teaching. Up to this point we have only been teaching CIPP and OEC classes. Now, I am not sure what either of these acronyms stand for, or how they differ from each other whatsoever, but those are the classes we have been teaching. The best I can figure, the CIPP and OEC classes are electives (not all kids take them), and probably cost their parents extra money. They have a specific curriculum (the textbooks we have been given), and feature a significantly smaller class size (read: only 32 kids).

The only thing we knew about the oral classes before starting to teach them was that there was no set curriculum, that all seven of us were responsible for three classes per week, and that we had to start this week. We weren't even given a schedule on when during the week these classes were, or told what rooms they were in. Frankly, we didn't know anything.

On Tuesday morning we walked into school and there was a schedule on each of our desks. It was at this point, at 9am on Tuesday morning, that I learned that my first oral class was at 10am on Tuesday morning. I asked if I had to go and teach this class, and the Chinese teachers said, "of course you do!". I asked what I was supposed to do, and they responded, "You should have prepared your lesson plan already". I almost got in trouble for not having prepared anything for a class I didn't know existed until that morning!

I asked the two foreign teachers for whom this was their second year, and they said "We usually just made a powerpoint about a children's storybook. Teach them a few words from the book, read them the book, and then review the vocabulary".

Brilliant! I thought. The first children's book that came to my mind was The Cat in The Hat by Dr. Theodore Geissel. I'm not sure why this was the first book that came to mind, but it is always the first book I think of when I think of children's books. Don't you? Like, even now while typing this up if I picture "children's book" in my head, I picture the eponymous cat and his eponymous hat.

Anyway, I started furiously slapping together some slides trying to convey the meanings of words like "cat", "hat", and "sneetches". I then decided that, if all else fails, I'll just show them the old 1960s cartoon movie. The class is 40 minutes long and that movie was about 35, it was perfect! I started downloading it.

Two quick notes here. Number one: I am never this casual about blowing off my responsibilities for teaching a class. This was a one time emergency because of the aforementioned situation where I didn't get any advanced notice about teaching this class. I mean, yes, I do watch a lot of TV during the day, and I play a lot of Chip's Challenge (shout out to webccgame.com/?page=play), but that's just because we have to sit in the office for nearly 10 hours a day! I prepare amazing powerpoints and amazing classes. I AM CHANGING LIVES OVER HERE.

Second note: I don't know if I have properly discussed this, but the internet connection at our school is simply DREADFUL. Instead of buying a business-quality router, or paying for a satisfactorily fast internet service, the school just bought 5 routers and placed them at funny and inconvenient points around the entire complex. What this means is that, at any given time, there are between 50 and 100 teachers using the same connection at the same time. We were given very explicit instructions not to stream netflix or any other video services at school, because it would clog up the already clogged up system. Since I am a compliant, good-man, I always bring files of things to watch from home. I only use the internet at work to look up pictures to put into my lessons (i.e. pictures of sneetches), and I am pretty sure my foreign coworkers do the same. I cannot say the same thing for the Chinese teachers though. Literally every single one of them streams tv shows ALL DAY LONG. They all watch soap operas too, which would be hilarious if it didn't make googling sneetches so difficult.

Third (brief) note: I imagine 99-100% of you implicitly understood what I meant when I said "googling sneetches", which is pretty impressive because neither of these are really real words at all.

Okay, so, back to my trials and tribulations. I couldn't download any pictures of any cats! I couldn't download any pictures of any hats! My entire presentation was a SHAMBLES and the clock was ticking closer and closer to my time. I quickly asked for help. Laura had some great advice about what she was doing for her first oral class. She was doing a much simpler storybook (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom). This was a good idea, but at this point I didn't want to start all over again.

The two-year veteran foreign teachers came to my aid and, upon hearing what I was doing, mentioned that it was WAY too advanced. They highlighted to me the fact that I was doing oral classes for first graders. This particular batch of first graders, we all recently learned, hadn't gone to any kindergartens. Since they were also not in any of the OEC or CIPP classes, this meant that my presentation on that lonely Tuesday morning would literally be the first time they had EVER heard English in their entire lives. The sneetches would have to wait.

The clock showed 9:55. I had 5 minutes. The Chinese teacher who would be my "assistant" came over and said "class is now". "I HAVE FIVE MINUTES", I snapped at her. "No, it starts now". "Well, I'll come up when I'm done". In my feverish scrambling I had an epiphany. Family! I could teach family words. I didn't even really need pictures because I knew the Chinese words for "mother", "father", "brother", etc. I quickly downloaded 8 pictures and slapped them onto a powerpoint (the internet worked now, of course), and ran upstairs.

I was greeted by far too many children.

It was at this momentous second that I learned that the oral English classes have BETWEEN 50 AND 60 KIDS IN THEM. I couldn't believe it. I hobbled into the room and started setting up my stuff. As per usual, the Chinese teacher kind of took a seat and didn't do anything. I was immediately rushed by all of the children. These children were clearly not as well behaved as the OEC and CIPP kids, and that's saying something! They started literally climbing on me. Several of them spanked me on the butt. I started shouting just to be heard and eventually sort of got them into their seats.

The lesson was a disaster. We started with the word "Family". I showed them a picture of a family. The picture came up and the kids LOST THEIR MINDS. They were screaming, they were giggling. They were running around. I asked my assistant what the deal was. "They have never seen a black person before", was my response. It just so happened that the first image of a family I had googled was a family of African Americans.I didn't think anything of at at the time, mostly because I was in an insane rush, but now that everyone was screaming and cavorting around and I had completely lost control of the class I recalled how many times children had stared and pointed and laughed at me because I was white. Clearly these kids are not used to seeing much variety. Moving on, I went to the slide about "Mom"

I had never really thought of this either, but just showing a picture of a woman and saying "MOMMA" doesn't automatically indicate that she's a mother. Even showing them a picture of a woman with a baby didn't really help them. We muddled through the vocabulary anyway; I resigned myself to the notion that they were going to learn to say these words even if they didn't know the meaning.

As one would expect, having never uttered a syllable in a western tongue before, their pronunciation was terrible. I started writing the letters on the board. "M says MMMMMMMM. MMMOOOOOMMMM". They didn't seem to get it. The Chinese teacher said to me what I suddenly remembered on my own, "They don't know how to read those letters". Another epiphany! I started writing the Chinese characters down. 妈妈, 爸爸, etc. "They don't know how to read Chinese yet, they are only 4 years old", was what my ever-so-helpful assistant told me.

Well... shit....

Laura came in and saved the day! I had asked her to run some copies for me. I had made a word search with all of the family vocabulary words. I thought this would be a great way to get the kids to shut up and do something, and a great way to fill time.

I started passing out the papers, but my delightful assistant stopped me once again and said, "They cannot do this, they don't know how to read". I said, "They don't need to know how to read, they just have to search for these patterns of letters". "They don't know how to do that either", she said. "I will teach them!". "No".

"Okay. Class is over", I said, defeated. She was not happy, since we were ending almost 10 whole minutes early. I apologized to her, and explained that I was not prepared for this class, but that I would be next time.

Thus ended my second hour of work for the week.

The rest of the week went more or less okay, as far as work goes. I learned enough in my first oral class (if you can call it a class) that I was able to fine-tune the family lecture in time for the next class I had on Thursday.

Also of note is that Rose, the lady who "helps" me with my CIPP1 class, and who I've complained about before on here, just didn't show up for work on Thursday. I was met by Angel, our boss, when I walked into class. "Rose is not here, so you are by yourself today, okay?".

CIPP1 is my "problem class", or at least it was before the oral classes started. I was a bit concerned, but I since Rose is basically useless anyway and I do the entire classes on my own normally, I thought it would all be fine. In all honesty it was fine for the first 30 minutes or so. The kids were actually better than usual. This all came crashing down when this one kid, who is clearly the class bully just by looking at him, reached over to his partner's desk and pulled out his partner's white-out tool. He proceeded to mutilate it into at least 5 pieces just for fun. This caused Sunny, his partner, to just start WAILING. The class turned into Lord of the Flies almost immediately. I am not proud to say this, but I was unable to successfully regain control of the class. This stems largely from the language barrier, since Rose is supposed to be my interpreter for situations exactly like these. I didn't know how to comfort the kid, or where to send him. Was I allowed to let him leave the class? Where would he go? Similarly, what am I allowed to do with bullies? We weren't given any training or literature on the school's policies regarding such situations. Could I punish him? Could I kick him out of class?

I know about 100 Chinese words now, but none of them are included in the phrase, "Why did you break his white out tool? You should feel ashamed and go see the principal". I guess they are all now on my to-learn list.

After the dinner break, when CIPP1 resumed, I gave them all a test on Unit 1. I had been planning on doing this anyway, since they are the "problem" class, and I feel like they needed to sweat a little bit. It became an added bonus that I was able to just sit there for 40 minutes and not worry about needing Rose to translate for me.

That same bully also started beating up a kid at the end of class. He threw some books at him and tried to break his pencil holder. Wonderful.

The biggest news of the week was definitely the fact that we might be going to prison. I'm exaggerating of course. Maybe. Who knows. Really, though, if this post gets published then it's at least 75% likely that I'm not going to jail.

In addition to needing a whole bunch of permits, visas, and other bureaucratic papers signed just to get into the country, we need a permanent resident visa to live and work here for a year. This is something that the school is supposed to take care of for us, and they have 30 days to do it. Remember all those fun stories about getting weird physicals and getting unflattering photographs taken of us? All of those things are required documents for the eventual visa application. This week we were finally ready to do the last step and get our permanent visas. I haven't mentioned this yet, but we gave the school our passports over a month ago and we have not seen them since.

This is basically rule number one on the "things you aren't supposed to do when you go to China" list, but under the circumstances we felt like it was a good idea at the time. This school has been hiring foreign teachers for at least 5 years now, and I've spoken with a number of the previous employees (including the two that are working there again this year), and they have all reassured us that the whole process is on the up and up. Between that and the assurances of our liaison lady back in Michigan, who came highly recommended from the University of Detroit Mercy, I still think that it was okay to do this.

Nevertheless, it has been kind of freaky not having a passport for a month. We have never once been hassled or even spoken to by any police or official authorities, but it is something I worry about frequently. I have heard some horror stories online, and besides, it only takes one cop with an attitude to ask to see our passports and visas and then have us not be able to produce them before trouble happens.

But this week we were supposed to get everything back! On Sunday we were told that Monday morning would be the day we went to the visa office to pick up our work visas.

Monday came and went and yet we didn't. Tuesday, we were then told. Tuesday we will go.

Tuesday morning we were told that Wednesday was DEFINITELY the day we were going to go and get our visas. At this point I was annoyed and frustrated, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

On Wednesday we actually did wake up and go to the visa office. Actually we went to two separate places on different sides of the city. I'm not sure which was which, or what they had to do with each other. At the first place we were (all 5 of the new employees) shuffled into a stuffy office and sat down on uncharacteristically comfortable couches. It was raining very hard that morning and we were all completely soaked despite having umbrellas. It doesn't rain here as often as you would expect, but when it does rain you suddenly remember that south China is a subtropical climate.

In the office we waited for a few minutes, and then were handed some papers that looked like mini-passports. They were called "Foreign Expert Visas" and we were told to please make sure all the information was correct. It was, and so we handed them back. Then we were each handed a single sheet of plain white printer paper, and we were told to write a letter. In the letter, we were instructed, we should write about whether or not we had a criminal record in China, in our home countries, or anywhere else. We also had to write about whether or not we intended to commit any crimes while in China, and then put our signatures at the bottom.

Obviously I didn't intend to do any crimes, and wrote as much in my letter. I signed my name and handed the papers back.

We then went to the other office, which was much farther away. This building was gigantic, and it was all dedicated to the Chinese Office of Entry-Exit Visa Applications. We went to the appropriate waiting room and waited, appropriately.

After nearly an hour, our three compatriots were called to the desk and handed their work visas. They were done! More time passed. I didn't really notice because I was attending to my Chinese character studies on a cool freebie app on my phone. Eventually, though, I realized that we were still waiting. What were we waiting for? I looked up and saw that Jason the groommate had been talking to the lady at the desk for quite some time. Finally he walked back over to us.

"Jon and Laura there is a problem".

"Is it serious?"

"Maybe".

Let's take a step back for a second. Remember how we came to China a month early and worked at a different school in Zhaoqing? Remember how I said that our entry visa only worked for 30 days and then we needed to get the residence visa?

Well, if you do some quick math, you'll realize that we had been in China for exactly 60 days as of that Wednesday morning. Our entry visa had been expired for over a month and we had been in the country illegally that entire time.

I tried not to panic, but I was remembering all of those horror stories I read about before coming here (mostly links to news stories sent to me by friends and family. Thanks guys!).

"What are we going to do?", I asked Jason

"I don't know", he said.

Luckily we weren't arrested or detained, and were allowed to return to work.

I spent the entire afternoon talking to my liaison lady back in Michigan, my boss from the school in Zhaoqing, and a few of the friends that I had made over the last two months. Specifically, our Greek friends had told us that a somewhat similar thing had happened to them last year. Since they were both still free and by all accounts happy people, I thought they would know what to do.

The good news was that nobody was panicking.

The bad news was that everyone was pointing the finger at someone else. My current school was insisting that it was the other school's fault. They should have submitted some documents, and they were probably scamming us. "We think you have been tricked", they told me.

The liaison and the school in Zhaoqing, however, insisted that it was my current school's fault. Both of them told me that they had spoken to the Nanhai school more than once, and told them at least a month in advance that they would have to take care of our residence visa early.

Ultimately it did not matter. We had been in the country illegally for a month and the window for us acquiring the permanent visa had expired. I wasn't sure what would happen next. If I was being completely honest with myself, I did not see them throwing us in jail over this. Despite those horror stories, I felt that the worst thing they would do is send us home.

Over the course of the week we got some sparse updates about what was happening. Apparently it will all get taken care of, and it is unlikely we will have to go home. Apparently all our school has to do is pay a fine and then we can get our visa. The fine, apparently, is huge. We have been told it is over 20,000 yuan, which is more than $3500 US. Thankfully, and rightly so, the school is going to pay this fine. Since it was ultimately their fault, I have no problem with this. I am worried, though, that it will strain our relationship with the school going forward.

Even though it was their fault, I don't think they will ever see it that way. I hate to generalize, but I have yet to interact with anyone in this country who is willing to take any responsibility for anything. Any time there is a scheduling error, or we have been told the wrong thing, it is always our fault. Now that they have had to pay so much money to "save us" (20,000 yuan is more than 3 months' salary for either of us), I fear that they will act like we owe them something. I hope that they don't hold it over our heads, but if they do I will not be surprised.

The other frustrating thing about this whole process is that we STILL don't have our passports, and we aren't sure when we will get them. There is another national holiday coming up, and we will have October 1-October 7 off of school. We were planning on using this time to travel around the country, and maybe go to Taiwan for a day or two. If this does not get cleared up by the end of the month then there is no way we will be able to do any of these things. We would probably be able to do some traveling within the borders of China, but we could definitely not leave or come back. Even within China, though, we need a passport to book hotels and train tickets. We are effectively stranded here until we get our passports back.

I wish I could say that it all turned out okay, but as of me writing this on Monday morning we are still waiting. In fact, I am actually typing this while sitting in a waiting room at the Nanhai Police station. We are trying to iron things out as we speak.

Between the bad kids at school and the bad times at government, I am sure many of you are wondering if anything good happened this week at all. Luckily, my time at home has been much better. We gave our apartment another cleaning overhaul, and it's damn near livable once again. We spent some more time at the outdoor BBQ place as well, and I got to try some fresh snails and fresh squid. The snails were actually super fresh, as I got to pick the ones I wanted to eat out of a bucket while they were still alive. I've had escargot before, and I have to say the snails here were a bit of a disappointment. They weren't bad, by any means, but they were actually rather expensive (25 yuan for 15 snails), and it took them almost 40 minutes to cook them. To top it off, the snails are completely impossible to get out of their shells with just chopsticks. I would definitely get the squid again however. Ordering the food was a challenge, and a little reminder that my Chinese is really bad. In the end, we had to use my phone translator app. I was happy/disappointed to see that I actually knew the words she was trying to say me. Her  accent was just so heavy!!

We also did some sightseeing over the weekend. We've now seen all three of the "big tourist attractions" in Foshan.

On Saturday, Laura and I went to visit the Nanfeng Ancient Kiln. The kiln is located in the historic ceramics district of Foshan. According to historians and archaeologists, this little region of the city has been making ceramics for AT LEAST 5,000 years, which is incredible to me. Despite its name, the kiln itself is only about 500 years old. I guess I've been spoiled by China and it's ridiculously long history, because 500 years does not seem terrible old to me.

The kiln itself was an extremely long clay oven (several hundred meters long, to be barely more exact). There were signs all around it talking about how it burned ceaselessly for over 500 years, and other signs warning observers to be careful of the flames. This is funny because the kiln was clearly not on at all. I am not sure if it has been off for a long time, or if it just went out for the first time in 500 years that day, but I reached my hand inside the kiln and it was actually cooler inside the kiln than outside.

The rest of the district was cool. In fact, I probably liked the Kiln the least out of everything. There was a small section of the original Ming dynasty-era town preserved nearby, which was really fun to walk through. Most of the homes were actually being used as workshops for ceramic artists, so whenever we peeked our heads into the old houses we found a friendly artist inviting us to come inside and look around. There were also several fountains nearby which were worth checking out. "The Manger Fountain" was made out of a few hundred mangers (aka the Jesus crib), "The Pot Fountain" was made out of a few hundred ceramic pots, and "The Toilet Fountain" was an entire city block made out of western toilets.

We spent a few hours walking around and enjoying the fountains, the ceramics, and the shops. Upon leaving we discovered a different entrance that actually would have allowed us to get into the kiln for free. This was frustrating, but what the heck at least now we know if we want to go back with some friends or visitors sometime (hint hint).

Saturday night we went and discovered a new mall, and Laura was actually able to find some American sized clothes finally! We haven't had a desperate need for new clothes yet, but just casually looking around we have had a really hard time finding anything that wouldn't be classified as "extra small" in the US.  This is good news, since even though I have lost a lot of weight since 2012, I am by no means Asian-sized.

Sunday was the last day of the week (no, seriously, it's the same here as it is at home), and we FINALLY achieved our goal of seeing Xiqiao mountain. Xiqiao mountain is considered the number one tourist attraction in Foshan, and is actually featured on the wikipedia page for the city (wow!). It boasts, among other sites, a Guanyin Buddha statue that is over 227 feet tall.

The trip to the park was uneventful, as we took a taxi. All 7 of the foreign teachers decided to go together, so we actually had to take two taxis. After our last attempt to bus to the mountain ended in failure, blood, and ashes, we felt that the taxi was safer. The ride took nearly an hour, but I think that our cabbie was taking the long way on purpose. We drove north instead of the intended south for quite some time...

Anyway, the climb up the mountain was extremely arduous. It did not take as long as the climb up Dinghu mountain, but I think it was a lot more steep. Several thousand drippy, sweaty steps later we reached the temple at the top.

I say temple, but really there were at least 5 different temples. I am not well-versed enough in Buddhism to understand what each temple represented, or why there needed to be so many, but each one was more breath-taking than the last. Some of the most amazing statues and shrines I have ever seen were housed in these temples.

Also at the top of the mountain was a man who decided he needed to be my best friend. I am always wary of scammers and people trying to get money, since most Asian travel guides warn of such things, but this guy was just super duper friendly. He saw my white face and cornered me. "Where are you from????" he asked with a grin. "USA", I said, giving my stock answer. I have learned that virtually nobody in China knows what "Detroit" or "Michigan" is, and the majority also do not know "America". USA, while a bit arrogant sounding, is the only guaranteed answer that will be understood.

"Which state?", he said, still grinning. "Michigan", I told him. "I just got back from New Jersey yesterday!" he giggled, "I go to America at least twice a year! I work for the most famous TV antennae company in the world!".

I said it was nice to meet him and went on my way, but he followed  me like a faithful little R2 unit to my C3PO. "I will be your guide now!".

He stayed with us for a good 40 minutes. He told us about some of the temples, and also about how we had just missed a very big event. Apparently on Saturday night there was a holy festival at the top of the mountain and over 5,000 people had spent the night in the various temples. Today there was a big to-do going on and my guide said that the president was visiting. His English wasn't good enough to discern if he meant the president of China or what, but he seemed very excited. Regardless of who he meant, there clearly was something big and important going on.

We weaved through the throng of people and finally set our eyes on the Buddha. When people use the term "unreal" to describe something, they usually mean that something was bizarre or strange. To me, seeing the Buddha was literally unreal in the sense that it didn't look like it was actually there. I have obviously seen skyscrapers and naturally occurring shapes that were bigger than 200 feet before, but this was the first time I had ever seen a statue or a human likeness that was so unbelievably large.

The fact that it was at the very peak of the mountain, framed by nothing but sky on all sides made it seem even larger. I've since looked it up, and it's only about 70 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, which I have also seen in person. Somehow the location and the spiritual reverence that all of the onlookers were placing onto the statue made it seem so much more gargantuan.

We began our final climb up the last set of stairs to the statue. Once we reached the top we discovered that we could go inside. Inside of the Guanyin statue was a gallery of thousands of tiny Guanyin statues.

Guanyin is a Buddha that represents compassion and mercy. One of the legends surrounding her is that she craned her head so hard to hear all of the cries of the world that her head shattered. She was granted 11 heads after this with which to hear all of the cries, and she then tried to reach out and to help all of the cries that she heard. She reached so far that her arms shattered, and after this she was granted 1,000 arms to reach out and help everyone. One of the statues inside the enormous one represented her 11 heads and 1000 arms. It was kind of freaky.

I am not a terribly religious person, and frankly one of my biggest pet peeves is when people like me go to "spiritual" places like this and talk about how they had an enlightening or religious experience. It always feels so forced, and like they are the biggest poseurs in the world. I had a really amazing time on that mountain, and I saw some really beautiful things. I did not have a religious experience, nor do I feel the urge to convert to Buddhism. I will, however, say that there is something very special about seeing a sight that is considered so very special to so many. Being in a place that is considered holy, and therefore significant, for millions if not billions of people definitely does have a certain amount of weight to it. There was a buzzing in the air that resonated within me, and resonated with everyone else who was there. I definitely recommend that experience to anyone and everyone who gets the opportunity. But if you try and tell me that you came down from the mountain a different person who went up the mountain, I'm going to call you on your BS.

As with all things, the climb down the mountain took significantly less time than the climb to the top. This is a good thing because we were completely exhausted by the end of it. I thought I would take a short cut and go down a different set of stairs to the bottom, and I ended up in a strange place in the middle of a back alley on some residential street. I was worried because we were so far from our usual base of operations, and I was not sure how to get back to meet up with the rest of our party.

Luckily I was able to figure out which way north was, and I recalled that we had been dropped off at the 北门, or 'North Gate'. We successfully met up with the rest of our friends and, as an added bonus, located a bus whose route included a stop we were familiar with. Our ride home only cost 5 yuan!

So that was our week. I've overcome my sickness, but now we might be deported/thrown in jail or something. Expect an update sometime next week.

Unless.... you know...