Chinese torture
Fifteen years from now, it was to be a great story. As they head off to college, at points around the globe, the classmates return to where it all began: Zhuzhou City Kindergarten. There will be a reunion with their first foreign English teacher, Mr. Daniel, and a chance to reminisce about all that’s changed since then, in the days of squat toilets, SARS, cramped apartments and, gasp, Chinese language.
Theirs will be a story of growing up amid supersonic cultural change, of ditching almost completely the customs of their parents, of being the first in their family to own a car, visit America, buy a house. English, beginning with weekly lessons with old Mr. Daniel in 2003, was to be the only language spoken. Chinese, the peasant tongue, was yesterday’s news, a relic of old, pre-WTO China.
I’m a sucker for a great story, and so off I went to Zhuzhou City Kindergarten, sure that I’d love the little squirts and sure that they were journalistic gold, mine to mine. Their teacher, Mia, introduced me, and soon, a piano started playing and 26 children broke into a song:
“Hello, hello, hello, hello,
I am glad to see you
Hello, hello, hello, hello
It is nice to meet you”
For the first and last time, they looked adorable – itty-bitty bodies seated on itty-bitty chairs, innocent eyes, chubby cheeks, big smiles.
Then, class began. Mia whispered to me: “Talk about colors.” At Zhuzhou City Kindergarten, there’s a name for Mia’s words: “lesson plan.”
I picked up three plastic blocks, one red, one yellow, one blue. “What color is this,” I said, holding up the blue block.
A piercing scream came from the children, all saying something different, none understanding me, and only one decipherable word coming from them: “Waigoren!” That’s Chinese for “foreign devil.”
Next, I held up the yellow block, asked what color this one is.
Again, indecipherable screams, with a few more “Waigorens” heard above the din.
Next, I held up the red block. “What color is this?”
Again, screams, hoots, and “Waigoren!”
Okay, time for small groups. I divided the kids up into four groups. Again, chaos. I handed a blue block to the first child in the first group. “What color?” I asked. He threw the block at his friend. I went to another group. I held up a yellow block. “What color?” The yellow block was swiped from my hand by another child. He threw it at his friend. I went to the next group, held up the red block. “What color is this?” “I am fine, thank you, how are you doing?” answered a little girl in a pink jogging suit. “No, I asked what color is this block I’m holding?” “I am fine, thank you, how are you doing?”
My only consolation was that class, 45 minutes long, must be about over. I looked at my watch: 10:13. Class ends at 10:45. I decided: this is Chinese torture. The kids win. I will never return. Not that the school will want me to, anyway.
Class finally, mercifully ended at 10:45, with the riot police – the principal, gym teacher and busdriver – deployed to my classroom to bring the mob to order. Never have I felt so utterly defeated, so completely humiliated. The previous day, I had taught my college students for the first time, and felt utterly comfortable, in control, smooth. The students laughed at my jokes, asked good questions, behaved. The hour-and-a-half classes flew by. Now, 26 kindergarteners used me as their punching bag. Forty-five minutes was eternal.
And yet, somehow, Mia and the riot police had nothing but praise for my lesson, saying things like it was “very perfect” and that I’m “very clever” and that the children “love you very much.” In fact, Mia said, we’d like to invite you back tomorrow afternoon, to give a “public lesson,” attended by the children and their parents.
This was one of many surprises about the terms of employment with Zhuzhou City Kindergarten. I got into the situation because Mr. Ma, a colleague of mine in the English department here at the university, is friends with the kindergarten’s principal. As a favor to her, he asked me to come and teach there. I was promised 100 RMB a week, paid after every class, free round-trip busride from the university to the kindergarten, and one, and only one, lesson a week, on Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 10:45.
Well, Mia laid down her terms: 80 RMB per lesson, paid every month, not every week; take the public bus; give lessons, including “public lessons,” when we need you, etc. etc. etc.
Being spineless, and not knowing how to say, “I hate kindergarten and am never coming back” in Chinese, I agreed to come back on Friday for the public lesson, in front of the parents. I hated everything about this situation: it was a 30-minute busride each way, it would steal precious time to write and to learn Chinese and plan lessons for my college students, and all this hassle for my chance to experience Chinese torture.
And so, there I was on Friday afternoon, back at kindergarten. I walked into the room where I would give the “public lesson,” and it was palatial. Gleaming wood floor, big beautiful windows, a ballet bar on all the walls, a huge multimedia production outfit – huge speakers, jumbo TV screen, slick computer, keyboard, technology right up to American standards. The tech guy gave me a clip-on microphone to attach to my collar, which connected to a receiver, to be worn on my belt. Suddenly, I was Janet Jackson.
The kids came in, and parents started to follow. The parents were professionally dressed, wore gleaming jewelry, made it clear by their appearance that they were profiting mightily from China’s new prosperity. And, clearly, this kindergarten is one for kids – all single children – of means, to get the best education possible, for a big price.
And I realized something else: the best education possible means having a foreigner teaching English. It doesn’t matter if the foreigner is a dunce with kids. It doesn’t matter if the foreigner hates being there. It doesn’t matter if the kids, at that age, have no desire to learn English. All that matters is that a foreigner, with white skin and a heartbeat, is there for the parents to see and admire.
Magic happened: Mia gave me a lesson plan. It involved three apples in a basket: red, yellow, green. The kids were to guess what was in the basket, to work on saying “apple.” Then, I was to pull out an apple, praise them for saying “apple,” and ask, “what color is the apple?” And the kids were to tell me what color, I was to praise them, I was to pull out the other apples, ask what color, then praise them. Then, I was to show a picture of an apple tree, with three different colors of apples. And I would invite the kids up one-by-one, ask what color apple they wanted. And then they were to point to the appropriate apple, and I was to give them a sticker. And it was to end with me being the conductor of the applecart, singing a song, leading the kids out the door in a giant apple-picking train as we sang “All along the Apple Cart.”
And, amazingly, the kids did exactly what I asked of them. No one shouted “Waigoren.” No one threw apples at their neighbors, or me. And, yet, at the end of the lesson, as I conducted our apple train out the door of the palatial assembly hall, 26 itty-bitty kindergarteners in tow, and joined the kids in singing “All along the applecart,” I resolved: never again.
On the busride to the “public lesson,” as the bus narrowly missed speeding dumptrucks and taxi-cabs, the story I imagined to begin with took on a different tone. Fifteen years later, the kids are at their reunion at Zhuzhou City Kindergarten, reminiscing about all that’s changed since then, in the days of squat toilets, SARS, cramped apartments and, gasp, Chinese language. There will be a moment of silence as one of them reads the first line of the obituary for their first English teacher, old Mister Daniel: “In a collision with a blue dumptruck, the American English teacher was squished to death while en route to his weekly Chinese torture session.”
And so, I told Mia that I quit kindergarten. Of course, she protested vigorously, and promised to come to my apartment anyway the next Thursday, at the time of my next scheduled lesson. The next Thursday, I hid from Mia. First, I walked all over campus, two loops. Then, I came back to my room, went under my covers in my bed, not moving a muscle, not uttering a peep, letting the phone rings and the doorbell buzzes pass unanswered. There I was, 27 years old, unable to bear another single day of kindergarten.
