Logic

There really isn’t a good way to say this so I’ll just come right out with it up front and explain after: from all my experiences with Chinese people so far I have gained the sense that, as a culture, they have serious deficiencies with broad scale logical thinking. People’s focus is very much on immediate problems with no thought to the consequences. Do you have some trash? Throw it out the window. Never mind that the streets are filthy and filled with trash, your trash is ‘gone’.

My personal favorite example of this is the not uncommon enough practice of shitting in the street. Yes I am serious. I had heard of this happening, and seen/smelled the evidence, however, it took a while to see a culprit in the act. No fanfare. No guilty glances to see if anyone was looking. No scornful onlookers. Just a guy shitting in the street. And if the only problem at hand were the need to relieve one’s self, why not? The idea of what happens to the creation afterward doesn’t seem come into play.

At first I felt like I was being overly judgmental. I figured that I must not understand the culture well enough to know the reasoning behind most people’s actions. Mind you, I’m leaving the street shitters out of the term ‘most people’. Turns out that if there is some logic structure specific to China, none of the westerners I’ve talked to have figured it out. This includes people who have spent up to ten years here, others who have Chinese spouses and girlfriends/boyfriends, and those I suspect will never leave because they love China and it’s people.

The best explanation I’ve been given for this seeming shortcoming squarely blames communism. People don’t think through the consequences of their actions because they assume that the government or someone else already has. Apparently the culture has become so used to not having responsibility, that people won’t assume any for fear that they might be blamed if something goes wrong. Thus, it takes a lot more effort and time to resolve a problem because the person you are talking to doesn’t see your problem as the issue. They see you coming to them with your problem as the issue.

Time Zones

Perhaps you don’t know, but China does not divide itself up into time zones. Instead, the entire country sets their clocks according to a standard time zone for Beijing, and has done so since 1959. After all, national unity and homogeny are at stake! Never mind the fact that this makes as much sense as expecting the entire continental US to sync their clocks with Alaska in order to make every one to feel like a ‘real American’. I’ll touch on this more later so that I don’t sound too ethnocentric, but I chalk it up as another wonderful example of how little talent the Chinese have for rationality and logic.

Anyway, because Dalian is considerably east of Beijing, it gets light here very early in the morning. I did not know that before I came, and the direct sunlight at 5:00 AM every day seemed a little strange at first.

An unexpected side effect of the time zone setup here is that I wake up almost every morning with a sickening feeling that I’m late. We’ve all felt it. That moment of realization that we’ve missed something very important by sleeping too long. I just get that every day here. Mind you, I’ve never actually been late to anything here because every time I wake up in the morning, it is somewhere between 5 AM and 6 AM, hours before anything I do ever starts. Despite that, those first few waking moments before I can find a reassuring clock are no less horrible. I never realized how attuned our bodies/perceptions are to different positions of the sun.

On the up side, I’m more productive with the early mornings, and long nights out drinking tend to be mitigated by the sun’s sobering light. An all-nighter here means lasting until just after 4:00. There is just something about a sunrise that kills one’s motivation to go to another bar. It’s the definitive period at the end of an inebriated sentence.

Raining

It’s raining! I know that this may not seem like very important news, and it isn’t, but not every part of living in China can be earth shatteringly exciting.

One of my favorite parts of living here is the appreciation I have gained for very simple pleasures, and the rain is a subtle joy for me. It doesn’t seem to happen all that often, but when it does, it clears of the streets of whatever grime has collected and banishes the potent smells that occasionally violate my nostrils. In fact, after a rain, the air smells, dare I say it, good. At the very least, it doesn’t smell bad.

I will say, that the summer weather in Dalian is one of its finer characteristics. The days aren’t so uncomfortably hot that air conditioning ranks just under water and food for basic necessities, the nights are warm, the steady breeze that I predict to loath in the winter keeps the air fresh, and the humidity is low. Apparently this is rare for Chinese cities, but blue sky is normal around here.

It’s also nice to see that the residents take advantage of Dalian’s beautiful weather. People are always outside playing cards, flying kites (something that is very common here), exercising on the adult playground equipment, or just passing time in their own various ways. Whenever the fountains in People’s Square spring to life with their hourly display, a generous crowd gathers to watch. It doesn’t even seem like people are necessarily there for the water display. Instead, I get the sense that the fountain is just a good excuse to get outside with other people.

But for now it’s raining, and the umbrellas most women carry in order to block the sun and keep their skin white, are getting some practical use.

Traffic

I’ve never liked the phrase ‘culture shock’. Instead, I see cultural adjustments while traveling as a matter of understanding and fitting into the rhythms of that culture. You might say that I am arguing semantics, but somehow ‘rhythms’ seems to encompass a cultural differences better than ‘culture shock’ does since the moment to moment experiences don’t ever seem to be all that shocking.

With that said, the differences in traffic rhythms here are not subtle. I would never think to walk into the middle of swiftly moving traffic at home. Doing so only has bad endings. Conversely, in China I have no problems with walking into the middle of a six lane highway during rush hour. I’ve stood on the double yellow taking photographs with a tripod without any concern for safety. At home, I would be startled and outraged at a driver missing me by inches. Here I just assume that the driver waited for enough room to get my.

I mentioned the rhythms of a culture before because despite the cavalier, ‘seat of your pants’ attitude displayed by divers and pedestrians, there is still an identifiable flow to the roads. Along with the formal rules we are accustomed to embodied by stoplights and lanes, everyone acts according to the acceptance of unspoken rules. The main one seems to be an extrapolation of the Chinese tendency to push instead of cue. As long as no one gets hit, anything goes. And while you might expect this kind of situation to be rife with road rage, no one seems to mind being cut off by another car or person. They just don’t take it personally. They expect it.

I guess that I’m still impressed that it all works. I don’t mean to say that there aren’t accidents, but for what it is, I would expect a lot more than there seem to be and I call it a rhythm because, despite the stark differences, it still flows.

Week One

All in all, my transition to living in China has been very smooth thanks largely to my manager Adam, the other teachers, and the Chinese staff at the school. When I arrived, Adam and two other teachers (Andy and Ty) met me at the airport and took me to my hotel; by the end of the following day, I had seen the apartments Adam and Dan  had cherry picked, selected one, and moved in.

Dan is the other new teacher at Shane and my roommate here. While Shane generally sets people up in single apartments, Dan and I decided before we came that having a roommate would make things easier financially, socially, linguistically, and culturally. Dan is from Duluth, Minnesota and went to school in Spokane, Washington at Gonzaga University. And while I’m completely new to this country, Dan spent four months abroad in Beijing. Therefore, he knows a lot more Chinese than I do…for example, any. 

It seems that I got the easier end of the bargain as far as apartment selection is concerned. While Dalian is only 100 years old, and therefore a very new Chinese city, it has a checkered past where occupation is concerned. Having been formerly controlled by the Russians, the Japanese, the Russians again, and finally the Chinese, the city displays some very clear discrepancies in building quality. Take our apartment for example. The building is very new, the unit only had one occupant before us, and it could easily pass as a basic apartment in America. On the other hand, the building next to ours (still occupied with tenants mind you) is literally falling apart. The top three floors are caved in; I wouldn’t really even call them floors anymore now that it comes to it. We’re talking crumbling concrete with exposed rebar reinforcements. This place makes the projects in Chicago look like Lake Forest and it sounds like a few of the rejected options Adam and Dan endured were right around that caliber.

The school where I work is part of the larger Shane English School chain, however, from what I understand, our branch/franchise has very little connection with other branches apart from the name and the materials used. At any one time there are around eight foreign English teachers and fifteen to twenty Chinese support staff. Each class is taught by one of the foreign English teachers and assisted by one of the Chinese staff. Because the classes are geared toward English immersion, the Chinese staff generally act as disciplinarians instead of translators.

During the first week, Dan and I observed other teachers’ classes and attended about six hours of training for teaching ESL at Shane. The school’s approach primarily uses games in a total immersion setting to teach the language and I have to say that I was, and still am, surprised at how well it works. Clearly, no system is perfect, but given that most students only come to one class per week, some are very advanced for their age. Most classes are an hour and forty minutes long with a ten minute break. The youngest age group (3-4 years old) have shorter, hour long, classes.

In addition to classes at Shane, the school sends a teacher to a kindergarten called YiDun five times a week. This consists of teaching five different short classes of varying length. However, since the classes are so short and the kids are so young, planning for these lessons is absurdly easy and the actual teaching is even easier. The main goal of teaching at YiDun is more exposure than anything else so as long as you are there, smiling, and playing games with the kids in English you can’t really go wrong. I went there to teach for the first time yesterday and I think I spend almost half of the time entertaining the kids with funny faces. With the current schedule, I will go to the kindergarten on Thursdays and Fridays, Dan will go on Mondays and Tuesdays and Aaron will cover Wednesdays.

Travel

First impression: Not Good, and I wasn’t even here yet. If you want to come to China, make sure to apply for your visa early. The Chinese have a certain attitude about getting things done that hinges upon whether they want to or not. In my case, the Chinese consulate didn’t want to keep track of my visa application and passport. Once they did find it and admitted that they had, they didn’t really want to give it to Chris Franz until the day before my flight (Chris was kind enough to apply for me since you have to apply in person and there is no consulate in Denver. In my book Chris is a saint). The result was that my visa and passport ended up waiting for me in the Los Angeles airport. Needless to say, one becomes a little apprehensive when starting an international trip without a passport and the required visa. In LA, I turned a few heads as I made a mad dash to pick up my visa, then my bags, check into my flight, clear security, and get to the gate. Apparently no one there has seen a person running in an airport. Another bit of evidence that LA exists in its own reality. 

If there is one thing I would advise about long international flights, it’s aisle seating. I don’t say this lightly. I am a huge window seat fan, however, I came around to the aisle sentiment somewhere in the 7^th hour of my 14 hour flight when I realized that I had no way of getting past the slumbering Chinese roadblock that snored between me and stretching my legs. Besides, the only real benefit provided by the window is negated when the view stays stubbornly constant for 10 hours. Did I ever get away from that economy class prison? No. I truly feel that a part of my soul is still there.

In the Shanghai airport (and China in general) it is best to be aware of what you need and, if you can, take care of it yourself. Gates will change. Announcements will not be made. If you don’t know what to fill in on parts of the immigration/customs form, make it up. I found this out from a customs agent.

Agent: “You must fill in address where you will stay.”

Blue Eyed Foreigner: “I don’t know the address.”

Agent: “You must fill in address.”

Blue Eyed Foreigner: “I don’t know the school’s address.”

Agent: “Guess.”

During the months leading up to my departure, I conceptually understood what I was doing. I was moving to China for a year in a few months- weeks- days- hours. The whole situation really became ‘I am moving to China’ when I realized that as the only white person on the flight from Shanghai to Dalian, all of the announcements made in English were made directly for my benefit. Yes white boy, everyone is staring at you.

At this point I’ve been in China for around a week and a half. I’ve moved into my apartment and I’m just starting to take over classes at the school where I work.