3: plebe summer revisited

the situation seemed weirdly familiar: swept far from home, sharing living space with a stranger, and a lifeboat with more strangers, with forced interdependence on urgent projects of dubious significance. then it dawned on me: annapolis! but i was a tender lad of 17 for that adventure- i'm an old man, now. what the hell have i done?

the tuesday morning orientation session dragged on for hours: there were nearly 100 introductions to be made. we had been pre-sorted into 3 groups (based on teaching experience), then subdivided into groups by chinese proficiency. from there we were whittled into alphabetical couples; my spouse- and new teaching partner- was brook roberts, now from boston, originally from kansas. we were to interview each other on 3 or 4 subjects, then introduce each other to the multitude: a sample exercise for conversation classes. everything that happened in that room was to be a lesson: this was our first education class, teaching english as a foreign language (tefl). our other components were to be practice teaching and chinese classes. ideally, one had tefl classes before practice teaching; those of us with prior teaching experience were to start practice teaching first, however. our session 1 was to be 5 straight days, wednesday thru sunday: three 50-minute practice teaching sessions starting at 8:30am, then three 50-minute chinese classes from 1:00pm. like annapolis, there was little time left for reflection...

we were then treated to lunch at one of those soviet-style feeding halls we'd passed (cafeteria-line food was surprisingly good, with lots of variety), herded back for more education (brook and i had to prepare for 3 hours of instruction the following morning), then force-marched again on a campus tour. the miasma from guangzhou had followed us north to beijing; all of china seems to be hazy and brutally humid in august. and hot, hot, hot; the salt rings on my clothes from dried sweat that i normally wear in summer are not to be seen here- because i am never dry. the fog i've mentioned seems to be just that, however- no sting or smell of pollution like i expected. the smell of diesel is less here than in any american city; but clear days were rare this august. i got little from that tour- the full stream of 100 parched, bewildered, light-headed and jet-lagged penitents couldn't hear a word of what was said at the front- but i was able to get some of these shots later, as i learned my own way around.

the campus of peking university is surprisingly beautiful- a cool green oasis in the midst of this huge and dusty city. the imperial summer palace is within walking distance, and the campus lagoons and landscaping date from some nobleman's imitation of it for himself.





the core buildings date mostly from the 1920's, though the university dates from the late 1890's- it was founded somewhere else. lots of turmoil through those years, and photos in the campus museum do little to explain it all, but mao seems to have spent a lot of time there. surprisingly, the main building is called democracy hall; the tianamen square activists were all from peking university. the building below is where we had chinese classes.





our chinese instuctors were graduate students there; they told us everyone jumped into the campus lagoon on the collapse of the soviet union- and say they are eager to do the same for end of chinese communism. (yet most of them were party members, too- go figure.)

the newer parts of campus were bustling with construction; our classroom building for student teaching had barely escaped the wrecking ball this year. it had not escaped the progress, however, as construction was literally at the door...





and i'll bet confucius won't be there for my next visit; this old classroom building behind our teaching building looks particularly vulnerable.

brook had little interest in collaboration; our lesson plans were going to have clear demilitarized zones between them. our initial planning session was an exercise in tight-lipped restraint; our later ones weren't so genteel... as a final military parallel, we were expected to dress the part for practice teaching: dress shirts, no shorts or sandals in the classroom. notice all the open windows in the classroom building below? they didn't do a bit of good... we were on 3rd floor in the center block.



next: another long march...