Day 17: Corporal Punishment Gets a Face Lift

One of the most pervasive stereotypes about Asians in America is their smarts. Whether it's a product of parents or simply the educational system, there is the notion that Asians somehow “learn” better than most other people. And while this factors prominently into the “model minority myth,” it also underlines how much we as Americans don't understand about the education system across the Pacific.

The exterior of the main teaching building on campus (photo courtesy of Alexandra Sterman).

Education didn't get to be such a high priority overnight. Though I plan to write a subsequent post detailing the situation in China more generally, in Taigu, the environment still isn't exactly speed-tracked for learning. SAU is what can be referred to as a mid-tier school—it doesn't require a tremendously high score on the college entrance examination, but it ranks higher than the private vocational colleges that serve students who fail the test outright. Though the years leading up to college are paved with sleepless nights of studying and manic rote memorization, college and beyond is a breeze by comparison. Here in Taigu, college, graduate, and PhD students have a reputation for being lazier than their middle and high school counterparts. As a result, students routinely skip classes they find boring, text in the back of crowded lecture rooms, and play Warcraft in internet bars in lieu of doing homework. Unfortunately for them, China knows a thing or two about taking disciplinary measures to enforce appropriate classroom protocol.

At one of my part-time teaching jobs in Taigu town, my boss stood before a classroom of admittedly mischievous middle school students brandishing a jagged chair leg. He then proceeded to shout in Chinese, “if you don't behave well in this class, I will use this to beat you,” before walking out and pleasantly ushering me in to start my lesson. It was not the first time I had been privy to the threat of physical violence at an institution of learning. When I did an activity on values and morality last semester, the vast majority of my students were in favor of beating their children, as almost everyone in the class had been beaten growing up either by their parents or their school teachers. Punishment for acting out in class in China is severe. A friend told me that when he was in high school he was once forced to stand within the confines of a chalk-drawn circle for an entire class period for disrupting his teacher. Others have spoken about the tiny metal rulers that teachers would use to hit you if you were nodding off in class.

A hallway and a segment of the wall from inside the main teaching building, both of which look like vestiges of a zombie apocalypse.

Earlier this year when we were taking the new Fellows around campus, Gerald aptly pointed out that the main teaching building looks suspiciously like a level straight out of the classic shoot-em-up arcade game, House of the Dead. The walls are pockmarked with what might as well be shells from a sub-machine gun blast and the halls are so stark and dimly lit that you almost expect a biologically engineered undead to emerge from the shadows at any moment. At the front of the entrance stands a rusting statue of a famous Chinese educator and a precariously dangling chandelier as if to warn of imminent danger. The classrooms themselves are bare and gloomy save for coats of white paint that seem to wilt further into gray by the day and large portrait-sized biographies of famous Socialist dictators. Even in midday, walking the halls alone can send shivers down my spine. So in the end, the big question still remains—what's more terrifying: a flesh-eating mutant or the Chinese disciplinary system? Hand me that shotgun any day.

Day 16: Have Your Cake and Eat It Sparingly

A part of me laments the fact that I haven't celebrated my birthday in China. Last year, my 22nd birthday in New York was my last big send-off before embarking on this Fellowship, and this year, I was nearing the tail-end of a summer of travel in Southeast Asia with a bunch of strangers on-board a cruise liner floating through Halong Bay. What's worse is that next year, my plan is to be back home for my birthday so that my visa doesn't run out and I can start readjusting to American life again. Though it disappoints me in some ways, after experiencing a myriad of birthday celebrations over the last year-and-a-half, I at least have a good sense of what I will be missing out on.

Lighting the candles on James' birthday cake, generously provided by the Foreign Affairs Office (photo courtesy of Alexandra Sterman).

Even for young people in China, birthdays aren't nearly the raucous occasions that they are in the states. Especially since China doesn't have age requirements on drinking, the very concept of a 21st birthday party loses its sanctity and function as a rite of passage. Most times, a birthday is an understated affair—oftentimes spent having a big meal with friends or going out to sing karaoke. But despite its lack of pomp and ceremony, there are still some traditions that stick. One involves the ingestion of a heinously long noodle to symbolize longevity, while most of the others seem to revolve around the decadent and oftentimes unappetizing excuse for a birthday cake that's served up at every party.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I have a deep well of knowledge on Chinese birthday cake culture. It not only stems from repeated (and begrudging) samplings of the baked good and a handful of purchases for friend's parties, but on the couple of occasions that I have actually witnessed the entire process of it being made from start to finish. Chinese cakes here evoke memories of the worst cakes from Chinese bakeries back home in New York. It starts with the base—a squishy brick of yellow sponge cake neatly trimmed and molded into a perfect circle. Next comes the syrupy-sweet icing, which comprises about 3/5 of the actual cake. It is plopped in heaping paddle-fulls around and on top of the sponge cake and swished in place with a spatula. On the top is where things get really artisanal—chefs armed with pastry bags squirt bits of colored icing to shape into flowers, figures, animals, and the lettering used for personalized messages. Then, the entire masterpiece is packaged under a plastic lid, fastened with twine, and ready to distribute.

Just as we did last year, we celebrated Lynn's birthday just before the start of the semester.  We went first to karaoke and then bought her cake and dinner at an outdoor market in town (photo courtesy of Alexandra Sterman).

Ironically, my first real memory in China is of a birthday party. Not 24 hours after I arrived in Taigu, Anne invited me to go out to dinner with her and a couple of Chinese friends to celebrate her friend Lynn's birthday. Slightly jet-lagged but desperate for an amicable first impression, I agreed, and no sooner was swooped up in a cab and dropped off first at a karaoke parlor and then on to a restaurant for dinner. Since then, many birthdays have come and gone—all evoking the most infamous tradition of smearing icing on the birthday recipient's face for good luck. That, paired with the reality of eating such cake on tiny Styrofoam saucers with a fork designed for garden gnomes, it would appear that Chinese cakes are meant more for destruction than actually being eaten, which is fortunate given the taste. James, too, celebrated his birthday in the fall, and we pulled out all the stops in observing the Chinese traditions, icing and all. Because at the end of the day, it's all about cross-cultural acceptance.

Day 15: Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

As is the case in many developing countries, in China, tap water is not safe for general consumption. Before I moved here, it was the first time in my life—aside from a brief family vacation in Puerto Rico—that I had to envision going through life without being able to drink the water. I imagined lugging a miniature reverse-osmosis water filter to China to hook up to my kitchen sink and brushing my teeth with rainwater. My old housemate Brendan, when he was living abroad in Taiwan, told me that he took precautions both to boil water and then run it through a Brita filter before he deemed it safe enough to drink. In reality, though, the situation here is a lot tamer than I anticipated. We have a snazzy water cooler in our living room with a split hot/cool water valve system, and when we finish each 20-liter reusable container, we simply call to have a new one delivered right to our door.

I realize the privilege that comes with being able to drink tap water, and yet ironically, in some of the only places in the world where that's a viable option—America and Japan, among them—it is becoming more and more unusual. People have become so afraid of the safety of tap water that it is gradually being phased out by the bottled water industry. By contrast, in China the fear of tap water is not irrational—whereas Indian locals actually do drink the water, no one in China drinks straight from the tap. Rather, all of the water is irradiated or boiled, making the only water served at restaurants scalding hot. It also means that in order to have drinking water, students must carry large hot water thermoses to water-filling stations on campus and wait until the water is cool enough to drink. There is a danger that comes with a society used to handling boiled water, evidenced by the burn marks and scars on many of the people.

A long line of spigots at a hot water filling station on campus.

But aside from drinking water, water culture in Taigu is a complexity in and of itself. For one thing, it's hard to tell whether or not the black water that seeps into our washing machines actually gets our clothes any cleaner. For another, the water in our houses turns off at 11pm every night. That means no showers, no washing hands, and no brushing teeth. In spite of the annoyance, what's worse is that the schedule is incredibly inconsistent—sometimes the water shuts off as early as 9pm or stays on all night. Every turn of the faucet makes for a thrilling adventure—at times it's business as usual, but every third or forth twist, it'll surprise you.

The shower is equally as finicky. I pray for those rare times when I can take a shower completely uninterrupted by the gargling sounds of the pipe gaskets, a prolonged shock of coldness, or the water intermittently turning off for minutes at a time. I like to compare my shower-head to a spitting dragon—every now and then it likes to sputter and hiss at you with a concentrated blast of scalding hot water. The quality of the showers also varies based on the time of day—with the water pressure deviating from a healthy stream to barely a trickle. But the worst and scariest by far are those times at night—past the water cut-off curfew, with no shops open and no water left in the cooler—where we literally find ourselves without any means to drinking water. It's yet another reason, I'm learning, not to take even the most basic things in life for granted.

Day 14: This Room Was Built on Good Intentions

You know the old saying that goes: “things always get worse before they get better”—the belief that even at its worst, there is the supposition that in the future a given situation will improve? Well, whoever coined that phrase obviously never lived in a Chinese house.

This realization was a long time in the making. I had seen structures outfitted and thrown up in nary a month's time in numerous cities in and around China, but most strikingly on campus and in the town of Taigu where I live. Giant construction pits full of concrete slurry, mortar, fragmented brick chunks, and wooden support beams line the edge of North Yard, and seemingly transform into habitable structures overnight. However, as James, who worked as a stone mason for a year, will tell you, not all buildings are created equal. The instability and shoddiness with which buildings get erected in China is largely to blame for the grave aftermath of catastrophic events like earthquakes and landslides, which have been headline-making news of late. The emphasis is on getting buildings up, and not about ensuring the structural integrity of them to any large degree.

The door to my bedroom, decorated with posters from Hong Kong, New York, and Japan.

From an outsider's perspective, China's economic development is advancing at a blistering pace. But foreigners only see one side of the story—the tall, glittery new highrises that line China's skylines in Shanghai and Guangzhou. The truth of the matter is much more nuanced—that wedged within those massively tall skyscrapers lie innumerable building codes violations and a bevvy of cost-efficient, but ultimately low-quality building materials. While the exteriors may be paragons of grandeur, little thought is placed on the effects of that hasty construction in the long run. In fact, Chinese modernization bears a stunning correlation to the state of our one-story flats.

Much to my surprise, following the long summer holiday, I returned home to find the interior of my home meticulously re-modeled. Though most of the renovations were much needed fixes, within a matter of weeks, they had done very little to affect any kind of long-lasting change. It became clear to me that rather than tackle the problem at its core, aging houses like mine have just been remodeled to oblivion. In one of my first lessons on living in Taigu, I learned that leaning up against any surface is a recipe for discolored clothing. The white-wash walls in our homes are really no more than compacted layers of chalk and the external “bricks” are actually just red-dyed cinder blocks made to look like them. Since I first moved in, numerous dance parties have worn away the evenness of the floor, we've needed three replacement living room tables, and rats have chewed holes through drywall, plumbing, and ceiling tiles. Cracks have already begun to form in the new paint job of our neither sound- nor weather-proof walls.

My bedroom, outfitted with a poster from Pingyao, a tapestry from Oberlin, and a nightstand overflowing with nick-knacks and student gifts.  The red lantern from Nanjing in the foreground transforms the room into a seedy opium den by night.

In an effort to counteract such shortcomings, I've made a few DIY modifications. I did my own make-shift insulation by layering the three floor-to-ceiling windows in my bedroom with thick sheets of plastic. Though it does make the room warmer and ironically gives me quite a bit more privacy, it unfortunately eliminates the ability to see the sun. I've also tried to do a few less purely practical touches in the way of interior decorating, reprising my role first at Oberlin and later at Cornell—starting with a newly acquired lantern from Nanjing and a few well-placed wall hangings and posters. While they may not be enough to stop natural disasters, at least they're small steps toward improving my quality of life. Perhaps things do get better after all.

Day 13: Not for the Faint of Heart

Living in China has pushed my boundaries in more ways than I would have expected. For one thing, I no longer have the slightest equivocation about getting naked in front of a large group of other men. Though on one hand, this would do wonders to harness my burgeoning career in the adult entertainment industry, it also serves very practical purposes here in China. For one thing, weekly trips to the pool necessitate nudity, as do post-swim showers in a steam-filled locker room that see at least three men to every shower-head. For another, this new-found comfort with nudity also helps on those less-frequent trips to the public bathhouse in Taigu.

Think of public bathhouses as roughly the equivalent of laundromats in America. In the rural countryside, most apartment buildings and tenements don't come equipped with bathtubs or shower-heads, so it behooves tenants to have a place where they can take twice- or thrice-weekly washings. Though the bathhouse's main function is for bathing, some occasionally offer a small sauna or a lukewarm hot tub to complement the group showers. The reception room always sees a gaggle of svelte half-naked men lying on chaise lounges waiting to usher you in. Once inside, you are told to strip naked under an intimate canopy of bright fluorescent lights and store all of your belongings in a locker. The rest of the procedure is almost Roman in its archaic simplicity—you are handed a small towel and a packet of shampoo and proceed to the showers. The only difference is that, in China, you might notice a couple of squat tables covered in slick foam padding along the way.

I couldn't actually find a good picture of a Chinese bathhouse, so technically this one is in Baghdad, Iraq, but the accommodations are remarkably similar (photo courtesy of Reuters).

Those squat tables are for scrubbing. The way it works is this: first, the table is wrapped in a sheet of plastic. Then, you lie on the table and proceed to be rigorously rubbed and scraped until all of the dead skin is peeled off of your body. Like most people, I was quite skeptical at first. The idea of a stranger hovering over me with a Brillo sponge literally grating away at my bare inner thighs didn't seem like something I wanted to pay money for. But, like most things about China, I got used to it, in the same way that I did the grizzled older Chinese gentlemen who insist on laying spreadeagled near the mouth of the hot tub. After all, every time I go to the pool, I see men comfortable enough with their sexuality to literally straddle another man while vigorously thrusting and scrubbing his back with a beaded hand mitt.

My experience with scrubbing was largely good, after the momentary disgust of being specked with fine, rolled black shavings of my own dead skin. After I was doused with ladles of hot water to clean off, my skin felt smoother and softer than it's felt in years, and radiated with a healthy reddish glow. I still insist that the job of “scrubber”—though probably not desirable in any conceivable way—must be one of the most bizarre and unique in the world. On the women's side, I hear it's done by a woman dressed solely in a bra and panties, violently heaving and scrubbing up-and-down one's body. Though we are fortunate to have showers in our own homes, it's still a treat to go to the bathhouse. Labor is cheap in China, so it doesn't cost much of anything, but the real appeal lies in ever-expanding my comfort zone. And who knows, by the time I get back to the states, maybe those group showers in Harkness won't seem so scary after all.