MERRY CHRISTMAS! (and a Happy New Year!)

Merry Christmas from us and a few of the children from the Xinxin English Learning School where we occasionally teach on the weekends:







We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

My First Christmas Pageant Ever!

About 2 weeks ago a very good friend of mine asked me to write and direct a 20-30 minute Christmas Pageant.

The funny thing about theatre in China is that it's not anything like theatre in America. To them theatre is ALL masks, bright elaborate costumes, dance-like rhythmic movements, and that high pitch obnoxious warbling. Needless to say, they had not done anything like this before.

Obviously the blocking, dialogue, and just about every other aspect of the performance was very simply scripted, especially considering it was being performed by and for non-native English speakers with only one hour rehearsal time.

Rough Synopsis:

Narrated Intro
Children's Choir: Silent Night

Part 1:
Narration
Reading
Scene: Mary & Joseph go to Innnkeepers, end up in the stable

Part2:
Narration
ReadingS
cene: Angel appears to shepherds,
Women's Choir: Hark the Herald
Shepherds find Mary & co., shepherds go out into audience proclaiming good news.

Part3:
Narrated Intro
Reading
Scene: Wise men come bringing gifts
Ensemble: Away in a Manger

Narrated Conclusion

She asked me 2 weeks ago. I had it written a few days later so that we could cast people from our English studies the next weekend (the weekend before the performance). The cast members came from 5+ different english classes and most of them had never met one another. Some of my actors refused to take scripts because they didn't want to waste the paper. The ages ranged from 7 -mid-50's.

Cast List:
Children's Choir
Mary
Joseph
Innkeepers #1-3
2 Shepherds
Angel
Angel Choir
King from the East
2 Queens from the East

My set was a chair and immovable risers placed upstage.

My prop list:
wrapped blanket that WAS the baby Jesus
2 candy boxes (Incense and Gold)
One bottle Olive Oil (myrrh)
One stuffed sheep

We would have rehearsed earlier, but we weren't allowed into the performance hall early enough before the show. When 6pm rolled around (7pm performance) 2 of my shepherds, and my only speaking angel were missing. I replaced them all. 20 minutes before the performance the angel and a shepherd showed up. So we performed with 2 angels and 3 shepherds.

We had no run through. The woman who was bringing the costumes thought we just wanted Choir robes. (Languare barrier...) There was impromptu blocking, speaking, and gesturing. There was about a 6 minute pause when the narrator didn't know it was his turn to speak after Part 1.

BUT, no one missed an actual line, everyone was off script other than the narrator, everyone stayed behind the curtains when they were supposed to, no one touched props that weren't theirs, they handed off the microphone beautifully despite practice without it (with only a small exception), the hall attendant changed his mind and agreed to turn the stage lights on, and my replacement Angel was FABULOUS! All in all it was remarkable how it all came together. I was so impressed and proud of them!

I had an absolute blast taking charge of the project!

Fair and Balanced? (Another long post)

This past semester we were told to teach sophomore English Majors using a textbook entitled: A General Survey of UK and USA: A Contrastive Approach (ISBN978-7-04-012132). The following excerpts are taken directly from the book without changing anything, not even the spelling and grammar mistakes. You will soon see why we avoided using the book whenever possible. I could quote more but you get the idea.

Chapter 4 – Section 2: The Post War US: “Conflict between the USA and the USSR had begun to rise even before the end of the war, due to the American ambition of world domination.” (64)

“In East and Southeast Asia, the United States tried hard to control as many regions as possible through military and economic aggression. The US fully supported […] Chiang Kai-shek, who started the civil war against the Chinese Communist forces. By the end of 1949, the whole of mainland China had been liberated and Chiang Kai-shek with his left elements, fled to the island of Taiwan. This marked the end of the Chinese civil war and an end to the US control of China. […] The American reactionary policy against China ended in a complete failure and it was also the first major setback that the US suffered in Asia after the Second World War.” (64)

“The American aggression of Korea took place in June 1950, and the Korean War broke out. The Chinese Volunteers, asked by the Korean people entered the war in October 1950 and in the following month an enormous counter-attack was started against the American offensive. The US finally had to sign a ceasefire agreement in the summer of 1953, which marked the failure of the US aggression and the end of the war. This was another setback by the US and it was the starting point of the US decline after World War II.” (64-65)

“US-led NATO mounted an air strike on Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. […] the USA tried to make NATO as a tool of its global expansion. […] If US-led NATO was able to occupy Kosovo and to separate Yugoslavia, the USA would keep Russia under control and would be able to control the Middle East easily, which will further help the USA realize the dream of global expansion and its dominance of the world. It is doubtless an aggressive and unjust war, with is a violent trample on the sovereignty of an independent country.” (66)

Chapter 6: British and American Political Systems: “The capitalist countries, the separation of powers and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie are symbols of the political systems, but the forms in each country differ.” (82)

Chapter 11: British and American Religions-Section 3: The American Worship: “Christian Science is quite popular among the bourgeoisie class.” (153)

“Problems still exist in American religion. The USA is a religious world in which people have fervent religious beliefs. Some of the small sects are extremely intolerant. Some are rather emotional; some are odd and brutal; and some others are hysterical. There is another small religious group called the People’s Temple” The text continues to describe People’s Temple cult and the ensuing Jonestown mass suicide. “All these religious problems are also social problems. In such a highly developed capitalist world, the economic decline, constant unemployment, the disintegration of families make people all the more crazy for religion.” (154-155)

Chapter 15: British and American Sports – Section 2: American Sports: “The student spectators are led in cheering for their teams by trained, uniformed student cheerleaders, many of whom are pretty girls.” (198)

“America takes advantage of the abundance of swimming pools to produce the world-best swimmers. Teenage American girls, many from California, have dominated international competition. (199)

Chapter 17: British and American Foreign Relations – Section 2: The Relationship Between the USA and China: “In the Far East, China was the main objective of the USA overseas expansion. In 1844 US imperialism invaded China and compelled the Qing Dynasty to sign the unequal ‘Treaty of Wangxia.’ […] All this shows that the US imperialism tried to have the whole of China under its control. But in 1949, the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek met final defeat on the mainland despite more than a decade of US assistance. Incredulous Americans seeking an explanation for the disaster blamed the Truman administration, attacking communist sympathizers in the US State Department for the loss of China, rather than the mismanagement and weakness of Chiang’s forces.” (219)

“The US long-term policy of isolating China and separating her from the rest of the world had been historically proved to be a serious mistake and a failure.” (220)

Chapter 18: British and American Social life – Section 2: American Social Life: “This section gives an account of the social life in the USA from five aspects […] The gap between the poor and the rich is the third. In American society, a vociferous equality is greatly advocated. However, social equality has never been realized […] The difference between the rich and the poor is great because of the social system.” (227-229)

“The fourth is the decaying morality. The American society is developing very fast scientifically, while the spirit of the society is becoming more and more hollow. The premarital sexual relationships, homosexuality and others are only a few instances of this spirit.” (230)

“In the 1960s and the early 1970s, ‘new morality’ appeared among young people, most of whom were educated at college. They have premarital sexual relationships and live together before marriage […] Some Americans say this is only casual behavior; others may find such an excuse that premarital relations are the natural result of romantic love. This sounds even more ridiculous. There are more and more illegitimate babies born today in the USA. […] The ‘new morality’ is nothing but ‘immorality.’” (230)

“Homosexuality is another immorality and a rather strange social phenomenon that most people can hardly understand. It widely spreads. One reason for this may be the despair in marriage or love affairs. Some people fail in marriage and become disappointed with it. So they decide no longer to love the opposite sex, but instead begin to love a person of the same sex as a return of hatred to the opposite. Another reason may be that some people just want to find and do something ‘new’ and ‘curious’. As Americans are known as adventurous, they practised homosexuality as a kind of new excitement. Through this, we can see clearly the spiritual hollowness of these people and the distortion of the social order.” (230)

“The fifth is violence. […] It is said that, in the University of South Carolina, gangs of rascals have been taking girl students, women teachers and wives of teachers working in this university as their targets of rape, which has caused a great fear. Crime has decreased since 1990.” (230-231)

China reports, you decide.

My Trip to the Post Office...

Jes here. I tell you that it's me so that no one holds Shawn accountable in any way for anything I'm about to write.
Most of you know me in a general sense, but you're not necessarily familiar with my quirkier sides. So, you should know this is not "general Jes" speaking, this is "Post Traumatic Stress Jes". Worry not, I am well on my way to normalization, which would be a lot cooler if it had more in common with carmelization.
Anyway, brown paper packages are one of Julie Andrew's favorite things, but at no point has she mentioned that going to the post office is one of her favorite things. Julie Andrews and I don't have a whole lot in common. However, her appreciation for brown paper packages and lack of appreciation for the post office is something that we do share.
I should tell you that going to the post office, for me, is much like being the passenger in a speeding car heading toward a giant angry train while the driver of the car is completely distracted by something out the window or the CD changer or whatever, and you know you're going to die but you can't even scream because this driver just picked you up from the dentist's office where you got your jaw wired shut so you weren't even doing so hot in the first place. I don't like going to the post office in China. It is not fun for me.
So this is already how I feel walking towards the post office on Monday afternoon.
I walk into the post office and a woman behind the desk motions me toward the packaging desk. I wait for a while until a man comes and opens my carefully sealed package. He opens it, looks inside, and then reseals it. At this point he communicates to me that I owe him 2 yuan for resealing my package. Now, 2 yuan is not very much, but it is still far too much for what just happened. You can think of this first situation as a small cake. I tell you it's a cake so that you are prepared to hear about how this cake was iced.
I now go to a different desk to send my giant stack of Christmas letters. There's plenty of pushing, line cutting, staring at the foreigner, and all the usual pleasantries. I finally get a woman to help me. She takes my cards and looks through them. (You should know that all of the envelopes are addressed in the Chinese way - address top left, return address bottom right- because my post office in Yong Ning has refused to accept my letters any other way for the last year+) She proceeds to communicate to me via Chinese & gestures that my cards are not acceptable because they are not addressed in the American way and they are going to America. At this point I'm more irritated with my post office in Yong Ning for refusing to accept my normally addressed letters for the last year. I tried to communicate that I had sent many letters to America this way and that it was fine. They "told" me to readdress the envelopes on the back the American way. So I sit down at the desk and readdress almost all of my cards on the back, all the while being pushed, stared at, and all the usual pleasantries. You may consider this a thick layer of icing on the cake.
I'm just about finished and the woman takes my finished stack of cards and looks through them. Then, she stops me. She "tells" me that I had been doing it all wrong and that they wanted me to write my own address in the middle on the back. I lectured her for a few minutes in English about how the middle back of the cards already had the other addresses on them and why did I have to rewrite this stupid cards for the 3rd time when I knew that they would get to their destinations as they were etc., etc., etc. Go ahead and stick a few of those obnoxious little figurines on the cake.
I took my stack of cards and left the post office. I stood outside just breathing for a few minutes not sure what to do next. I walked across the street to KFC, bought a coffee, and sat down to
re-readdress my envelopes.
When I finished I walked back to the post office with that so angry you look happy kind of attitude (similar to how some things are so cold they feel hot... why does that happen, Eric?). When they saw me walk in they looked a little frightened but motioned for me to come to the front of the line. I gave her the stack and she barely even looked at them before she weighed them. She tells me the final cost and I give her my money. As she's getting my change she realizes she made a "mistake" and it would actually be twice as much. Candles?
I pay and I leave.
When I get on the bus back to Yong Ning the money taker walks to the back of the bus. I give her my 3 yuan and then she takes money from everyone else on the back of the bus. Then the woman comes back to me and asks me for money again. I tried to tell her I already paid, but I'm speaking English and she laughs at me and then tells all the other people around how funny it is that the foreigner doesn't speak Chinese and doesn't know she's supposed to pay for the bus. Seriously, woman? I am the only white person on the bus. I may be the only white person you have taken money from ever and you forgot that you took money from me?!?!?!? And today no less?!? So I laughed in that so cold it's hot kind of way, and I paid the woman again. Go ahead and throw a whole new cake on that first one.