Posts tagged Harbin

More examples of “Guanxi” in China

August 27, 2012 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , ,

 

Guanxi is an important word in China. It includes a lot of information for history, culture and relationships among people. The Chinese think guanxi is so powerful that it can help them to get a lot of unfinished things accomplished. First of all, a definition of “guanxi” according to Eagan and Weiner (2007) is the following: “…a way to get ahead is to know someone who can help provide a better opportunity…to know someone in a position of power willing to help you.” (p. 63) Perhaps Americans hold to a similar concept of “networking” where we try to meet as many people as possible to maybe help land a job. Maybe for the more outgoing and gregarious, Americans like to have many acquaintances and “friends.”

Over twenty-five years ago, as an unsuspecting American, I had never experienced the power of the word “guanxi.” After living in China in the late 1980s, it was interesting for me to learn more about it.  I believe most westerners may have an idea about what it is like, perhaps akin to “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.”  However, as I learned from my living and teaching in China for two years that it was much more powerful a concept than a random scratch to an occasional itch.  I will provide several examples of when guanxi was used in my experience and how maybe we as Americans might have something similar in principle or practice while being totally unaware of it.

At the time, I did not know why Carolyn (her English name) who was one of my Chinese students, knitted a beautiful green, cabled wool sweater for me. I bought the sufficient amount of skeins of yarn at the store and she did the rest.  Harbin, in the northeastern part of China is known to be very cold and she knew I needed to wear something warm for the oncoming winter.  I do not know that I did anything for her except have her over to practice English.  Later I found out that perhaps I was supposed to help her gain entrance to a university in the U.S.  I wonder about Carolyn these many years later. Every time I had put on that sweater I thought good thoughts about her.

Another instance of how guanxi was used in my case was when Stephen (English name) wanted to practice doing an oil painting portrait of me.  I still have the painting today but I don’t recall doing anything for Stephen except sitting and posing for him for several hours. He told me through his friend that he wanted to practice painting western noses (Dai Baize = BIG nose)  Stephen, as an artist, had been sent out to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution and so he had not learned how to speak English. He had been penalized for his talent. Fortunately we were able to communicate through his Chinese friend who was one of my engineering students.  So maybe Stephen wanted to be close to the power structure of my university at Ha Gong Da.  I also still wonder why Stephen went to Dalian with me and my sister and another student to help transport my 3 meter by 4 meter carpet for me that was put in a crate that was about the size of a coffin.  I was never able to repay Stephen for his service mentality of helping me. I never got him a job or found him other people he could paint for profit.

My young Chinese friends, Carolyn and Stephen’s expectations were that I help improve their lives in some way.  According to what Eagan and Weiner (2011), they claim with the beginning of communism, people of authority may not have been paid much in high salaries, but they had prestige and authority given them.  With these privileges of helping others, the senior ranking government officials could amass more power by gaining respect and trust of others under them.

I believe that Americans may be confused by this concept of “guanxi” because we have a different value orientation in place where westerners may do acts of kindness for others without any expectation of it being reciprocated. The following anecdote is what one of my Chinese students wrote about his experiences in China concerning this:

“I have seen many examples of how Chinese depend totally on “GUAN XI”. I have a friend who hadn’t high enough scores to study in high school. And his father found an officer who is a manager in education. Now my friend studies in a famous high school. Also I met a businessman who was ready to apply for a project but he had many opponents. He had a friend who is in the management for this project. Obviously, he got this project at the end.”

 

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Memories of Harbin’s Ice Lantern Festival

July 16, 2012 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , ,

Please go back in time with me about 25 years ago when I lived for two years in Harbin, the cold northeastern part of China. I enjoyed the breathtaking, beautiful sights of the Ice Lantern Festival which happened every January up to Chinese new year. I actually think Astana, Kazakhstan should have such a winter festival as well. However, that would mean the Kazakhs would need to ask the Chinese experts to come help them carve the huge ice blocks.  That won’t be happening any time soon due to sticky political reasons. Let’s just say there is an old, border tension that exists between these uneasy neighbors of Kazakhstan and China.

I do remember what a thrill it was for me, as an American, when the Harbin ice carvers came to St. Paul, MN back in the early 1990s to show Minnesotans how to do the intricate cuts into the ice blocks.  Back then in Harbin, the Chinese workers would take huge frozen ice blocks from the Songhua River and chip away the different shapes of animals and people.  I’m not sure HOW they quarried the ice on such a large scale, what was even more amazing were the intricate designs they chiseled on a micro scale. One of the experts used a little carved wood piece on top of his block as a kind of model.  The carvers needed to work carefully but quickly to make their exhibition ready for the judges.

With all the carvers stationed at their block, the whole park was starting to fill up with huge statues that looked like crystal.  For example, one exhibit was a dragon.  Another was of a pheasant where the artist delicately cut away the slender, fragile feathers.  A marvel to behold.  An owl was represented with outstretched wings and I saw many other examples, even some done by visiting Canadian artists.

One adventure while at the Ice Lantern Festival was our taking a horse drawn sled out to the middle of the frozen Songhua River. My friend and I watched the Chinese men take their daily plunge into the river.  These dedicated swimmers go into serious year round training for this event so their bodies are used to the frigid cold.  It was actually warmer in the water than outside of their carved out area, the size of a pool, where they did laps.

On the particular day we went to see these “walruses” take their dip, the wind chill factor was at an all time low.  None of the native Harbin people were crazy enough to watch this matinee showing of the swimmers.  In fact, it was very difficult for me to get my hand outside of my glove to even take a photograph.  How cold it must have been for these swimmers donning only their swimming trunks and flip flops!  For the high dive, they had blocks of ice atop one another, I have bone chilled photos to prove it!

Thankfully we got back to the sheltered “warmth” of the riverbank to enjoy the other entertainment with brightly lit castles and other structures (made out of ice but with colored lights inside). The whole Chinese family (remember “one-child policy was already in affect) came to enjoy. A Chinese family meant ma + pa + only child. Collectively the children would careen down the twisted slope down to the bottom to continue sliding across the ice of the frozen river.  Gleeful shouts of exhilaration could be heard from the little children who were under the watchful eyes of their doting parents.

We often would see toddlers or older wear a coat with sleeves nearly dragging to the ground.  The idea was that the child would eventually grow into the jacket.  Also the color of choice for young children was red, it was anathema for adults back in that era to wear red. Some Chinese were horrified that I, as a 30 something, young woman wore red sometimes. Although even while I was living in China that fashion trend was soon starting to change from the dour looking Mao jackets the older generation wore.  Perhaps these days you might not see too many dark blue Mao jackets.

(to be continued)

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Friendships Built in China and Cultural Revolution Memories

July 12, 2012 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , , ,

The following is a continuation of what I have started to write the last several blog posts. You see, I’ve been going through my old notes of my teaching experience in China.  It has nothing to do with Kazakhstan or human trafficking but if you read towards the end you can see how inhumane man can be against man.

Back in the 1980s when I lived in Harbin, the Chinese people were very aware that in order to build up their society, they must have good friendships with the western world.  Even though their customs are different from ours, they are trying to change rapidly.  One sign I had noticed in keeping with that theme was:  “Do Well in Sanitation – Build up Socialist Civilization.”  That was a case where the authorities were strongly advocating a new, no-spitting policy. They fined people who were caught spitting in public.

My job description as an English teacher in China was to build friendships while China kept building apartment complexes with red brick and bamboo poles.  The men would bring their heavy burdens to the top of six story buildings singing together in rhythm to lighten the load.  There would be teams of eight men who would haul heavy beams of cement while the leader would call out commands of which way to walk and when to stop together.  The bamboo poles were propped up on the sides of buildings to catch falling bricks OR men.  The piles of cement bags were either brought in by mule and cart or by truck. The men would work their way down the six stories of building by cementing the sides and securing the balconies.

Such hard, manual labor, I hope these men were paid well for their long hours in the hot sun under such conditions…but that was back in the 1980s. I hope working conditions have improved.

Like I mentioned earlier, my job was to build up relationships with the Chinese people at my university. I met some very fine people like Lu Bin.  She was responsible for finding me at the Beijing Intl. airport and taking me to Harbin by train.  Her father’s name was Mr. Lu. They invited me to their place to enjoy eating jiaozi which is like a meat dumpling.  To eat this delicacy, it must be dipped in soy sauce and vinegar.  Yes it is considered among the Chinese a great social activity, perhaps comparable to our pizza parties.

Sadly, at the age of 10, my new friend Lu Bin had been separated from her intellectual parents and was not reunited with them until ten years later.  The stories I heard about the Cultural Revolution started sounding the same.  With each sad story I learned from each different family, it spoke volumes of the lunacy that the whole country of China underwent from 1966-76.  As a result, Lu Bin, lost out on a chance for a good education.  She knew little English while I knew as little Chinese. We got along great!

Lu Feng, Lu Bin’s brother was younger than her so he was not affected by the Cultural Revolution.  Fortunately he was able to learn English and went to Canada to study.  For the time I was in China teaching English I enjoyed being with my highly motivated students.  They worked hard for me because they wanted to pass the national examination that would determine who would get to go abroad for more study. Many of my university students were older and were doctors, teachers and managers of factories.

To pass the time when we weren’t teaching, my teammate Rich would give tours of the city of Harbin.  He was totally absorbed in the history of the city and showed us the sites, even to where the old foreigners graveyard was outside the city limits of Harbin. A few of the gravestone markers had porcelain pictures of the deceased still in tact.  Most of the faces, however, had been chipped away by vandals during the Cultural Revolution.  About in the 1960s the prestigious grave stones and their coffins were moved from the center of Harbin to the countryside.

Back 85 years from this present date, Harbin was living in the heyday of the White Russians who had fled Russia after the 1917 revolution.  They made a lot of money in the timber business and as a result, many of the Russian made buildings were well built and are still standing in Harbin today (at least that was true 25 years ago).  Some of the places that Rich liked to take us on his tour were several Russian Orthodox churches still in existence. One church had only a handful of the original Russians who had lived in Harbin in the 1920s and 1930s.  The Meatov brothers from Poland still regularly attended services with the chanting of the liturgy from the main priest.

At the time I lived in Harbin, there was only ONE Protestant church still open and known as the “Three-Self Church.” Though splitting at the seams because so many attended this service, it was tightly controlled by the communist government.  The architecture reminded me of an old German or Norwegian Lutheran church. In the old days it perhaps seated about 200 people, but when I went to visit it there were seats up the stairs in the balcony and main floor, all to overflowing.  I would guess that 600 people attended a Sunday morning service because people sat outside the windows of the church or sat in the basement or fellowship hall.  Oh for such fervency of faith that the Americans should have with their well manicured and coifed churches. The people recited the Apostles creed together and even sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” in Chinese.  Imagine MY thrill to hear something so familiar yet in a different tongue.

Another onion-domed church situated close to the market was a landmark in Harbin. It had been closed soon after it had been built in the early 1920s and used as a warehouse instead. I had been told that the acoustics were great and on some rare occasions, Rich was able to get inside the old church and go to the top.  The front entrance was bricked up and blocked with “stuff.”  Maybe things have changed from 25 years ago, maybe this particular church is in use for its original purpose of worship. I’d like to think so. Someone from Harbin, China will have to let me know if there are any Chinese who read this blog. One other church was used as a light industry factory to make clothes. Yes, many changes have taken place since the Russians dominated the area.

Finally, I got to know several of the Chinese who had English names…they each had interesting stories.  Shiela told me that during the Cultural Revolution, her parents had been separated and set to work in the countryside in different provinces.  She was only four years old at the time and was taken care of by her 6 year old brother.  She remembers crying every day for two years. Her family had since been restored together and they each had high positions in their city.

Not only did the intellectuals suffer during the Cultural Revolution, but the artists did as well.  Stephen had been sent out to the countryside to be re-educated for about four years. Stephen painted a portrait of me because he wanted to practice painting western noses (they are considered BIG compared to their Asian noses).  The sign of beauty for a Chinese woman is to have big eyes, small nose and small mouth. I suppose Stephen tried to compliment me with that same prescriptive look.

I heard many troubling stories about the Cultural Revolution, but maybe most of today’s Chinese students don’t know this sad era in their most recent history.  I’m wondering what the Kazakh students know of their history.  What do American students know of theirs?

Stay tuned for more about my adventures in China!

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China Changes, Kazakhstan too?

July 9, 2012 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Will Kazakhstan change for the better or worse, like China? Kazakhstan has high goals to be in the top 50 developed nations in the world by the year 2030.  Will the Kazakh people succeed?  I’ve been going through old notes from my files about my time spent in China. Perhaps there are some similarities with the Kazakhs and the Chinese, see what you think.

Not sure how many Chinese currently live in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China. Back when I lived in this fine city, in the late 1980s, there were three million Chinese and very few foreigners. However, it was often referred to as the “Paris of the East” or the “Moscow of the East,” it just depended on who you talked to.  This massive city was once a slumbering fishing town on the Song Hua River just sixty years before I arrived in 1986.  The Russians had helped to build it up which could be noted by the architecture.  The river traffic on the river ranged from ferry boats, motor boats and rowboats.  An old Russian yacht club had been turned into a R & R place for Chinese government officials called “cadres.”

Harbin is known for at least two things: Sun Island and the annual Ice Lantern Festival.  Sun Island was made popular by a song every Chinese seemed to know and you had to cross the SongHua River on a ten minute ferry boat ride to get to the island.  You would see remnants of the old, Russian dachas with their distinct architecture and trimmings.  However, the festival is most notable because of the ice carvers who would descend on the area to mold ice chiseled from the river into fantastic figures of animals, people and building structures.  Walking through the brightly lit lantern festival was like going in a HUGE open air icebox.  COLD!

The train in China is heavily used and the most reliable for the everyday people. One of the routes for the Trans Siberian started in Harbin. Back then, there were still steam locomotives and I rode on one to a restricted area once.  An all-night endurance test of stopping every 15 miles for more fuel or water. You knew it was a stop because the engineer would slam on the brakes and you felt like you would fly off your berth to the floor.  Sleep was impossible.

They also had electric buses but I would rarely use them because they were always packed.  Especially in the winter when the windows were frosted over, you couldn’t see outside to find out whether you had reached your destination or not.  You had to count each stop to know when to get off.  But getting to the door was like playing the game of Twister with little hope of getting to the exit in time before the doors slammed shut.  I preferred walking or if need be, taking the taxi as a last resort.

Bicyclists had their own lane along side all the buses and cars.  It seemed that everyone in China owned a bike and parking lots for bikes were huge.  How to find one’s own bike was always a mystery to me.  They all looked alike.  Some people would rig up carts in front or behind their bikes to haul things.  I remember seeing one guy having about ten dead chickens hanging upside down on his handle bars.  I guess he was going to market with them.

Sometimes I would see blue “Liberation” trucks that had come in from the farms with their produce (cabbage, watermelon, etc).  They all were of the same model and style since Liberation in 1949.  Even into the 1980s, they hadn’t changed much in thirty years.  I wonder if they are still making them?

I also wonder if the older Chinese people are still wearing the ubiquitous Mao suits. That was considered THEE fashion of its day, everyone looked alike in their dark blue, buttoned up the front uniformed outfits.

A Muslim presence was evidenced in Harbin even though originally built up by the Russians. How did one know this while strolling down the busy streets of Harbin?  You just had to know that restaurants, which didn’t serve pork, festooned the blue paper lantern and blue trimmings in the windows and doors.

Billboards wouldn’t compete well with the Stateside ones.  Some billboards encouraged the populace to stick with the one-child policy. Others exhorted people to use good traffic safety.  Funnier ones would advertise auditorium chairs, copier machines or other essentials.  A whole different concept of advertising happened in this non-capitalistic society.  I wonder what the billboards look like now in China.

As was true in the former Soviet Union where I lived for a total of ten years in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, it was rare to see apartment complexes that exceeded 5 or 6 stories. That way people walked up those flights of stairs and they didn’t need to put in elevators.  Win-win except for those who felt winded by the time they carried their groceries to the very top floor.  Built in work out times.

To me, there was nothing aesthetically pleasing with about 99% of the homes in Harbin. There were no yards with grass, no flowers.  You would see t.v. antennas attached to little dwellings with sheds in front of the homes. It seemed lifeless except for occasional trees.  However, it was important for every apartment complex to have a balcony porch to put up the laundry to dry. So you knew people lived in these places as the clothes waved in the wind.

The PRC (People Republic of China) flag still waves the same even if everything else has changed since I lived in Harbin over 25 years ago.  The flag has four smaller gold stars in a crescent shape outside of a larger gold star.  I didn’t master singing their national anthem but I did get on national t.v. singing our American national anthem with two other American teachers.  But that’s another story.  We heard from teachers we knew in other parts of China who saw us on t.v. at different times.  Yes, we were rare as foreigners back in the 1980s.

The building I taught in was the main part of the Harbin Institute of Technology campus. The foreboding appearance of this place seemed to call back memories of when the Russians dominated the Heilongjiang area.  H.I.T. was founded in 1920.  Back when I was there in the 1980s it had a teaching staff of over 1,500 to 10,000 Chinese students.  It was and still is considered a key university, like the M.I.T. of China.

The emphasis of the university was engineering.  Twelve departments were in Management, Precision Instruments, Computer Science, Radio Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Automatic Control, Applied Physics. I lived in a Foreigners Guest house with people from Japan, the Soviets and a woman from Ireland.

Hindsight shows what I didn’t know then but do now. There was a fierce nationalistic pride among the Soviets who ate at the same table every noon meal with us Americans.  The “Soviets” were conversant in English in different degrees. Larissa was from Estonia and was the Russian teacher, her English probably was the worst.  However, she was the first I knew who had a VHS player for videos, her English improved markedly over the two years I knew her.

People like Isa (means Jesus) was a Muslim from Azerbaijan and Nick from Latvia (don’t EVER call them Russians) spoke the best English even though they also spoke Russian (and their native language).  Tomas was from Georgia and there was another physics guy. From where, I don’t remember but he didn’t believe in dreams.  I learned that each Soviet was proud of his own country and ethnic background. Very proud and now I realize that the time we spent together at meals was when the Soviet Union was starting to have huge fractures in their structure as a monolithic country.  Who knew?

Things have changed dramatically for the Soviet Union and they have also for China. One student asked me this very perplexing question: “Today the U.S. is a very modernized, advanced country, science knowledge has already been taught to most of the people. In the eyes of science, there is no God, but WHY some of you believe?” Another variation of that question was “The U.S. is such a young country (250 years) and China is a very old country (thousands of years), why is the U.S. so much more advanced?”

To many of my H.I.T. student their “god” is science, Marxism or communism.  China was referred to as a sleeping giant. Their goal that was uppermost in my students’ minds was to advance in technology by the year 2000 so they would be equal to other western countries.  Maybe they have succeeded…maybe not.

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Smiling vs. Smelling in China

July 6, 2012 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , ,

I taught in Harbin, Heilongjiang China from 1986-88, northeast part of the country. Think cold! I’m going through old notes that I took and kept from my Chinese students.  I was asked to be a judge at a speech contest of Chinese university students at Ha Gong Da (H.I.T.), at the university where I taught 100s of students.  Fortunately I had this student and he gave me the copy of what he had so aptly memorized.  Too bad he hadn’t gotten feedback from foreigners about the pronunciation of the /ay/ sound in “smile” and the /E/ sound in “smell.”  I had all I could do to not bust out laughing at how often he mispronounced the simple word “smile” over and over again to sound like SMELL.  The whole time he WAS smiling oblivious to his error. Sometimes I thought he was doing it on purpose. Maybe it is still only funny to me, see what you think. (Believe me, the Chinese laughed aplenty at the mistakes I made with their four tones).

I LIKE SMILING

I like smiling. I like s. because I love life. I love the world I’m living in. I love the people who are studying and working with me. Smiles express my sincere love of the world.

I like s. I like s. because I know life is hard – very, very hard. There are days with sunshine, but there are also dark nights; we enjoy happiness, but we also experience sorrows; sometimes we gain success, sometimes we have failures. S. express my deep understanding of life.

A s. is a facial expression. It is so simple that even a baby can do it. Sometimes we find it so easy to s., when we are enjoying ourselves, when we are sharing happiness with our friends and when we are facing the sun of life.  But sometimes we find it very difficult to smile, even to pretend to smile, when are having troubles, when we are suffering from being misunderstood by others and when we suddenly find that we are not as clever as we think.

I really don’t know that I can s. at these times. But I’d like to try, because I like s.

I s. when I am in the sunshine of successes.  I s. for my optimistic view of the splendid future.

I also s. when I am in the darkness of frustration. I s. for my self-confident in coping with the pain.

I used to expect that I would never fail in my life. But when, I later entered a larger world, I realized that I was wrong there. I began to acknowledge that I have as many shortcomings as virtues, and it is natural for me to fail sometimes on my life road. So if I really fail, I will face it with a s. Yet, I am confident to succeed again.

I s. when I am in the company of my friends, classmates and roommates. I also s. when I am misunderstood by others.

We can’t avoid frictions between people, especially between students who are living and studying together on the campus. You may step on other’s feet or be stepped on by others in the dining room; you may offend your roommates or be offend by them; your meat may be another person’s poison. At these times, you may get angry, so may others. If you s., that will give others a feeling of understanding, or a symbol of apology, and that will be helpful to release the tension. I think this is much better than staring at each other or striking violently into each other’s faces.

Once a friend asked me, “You are always s, but do you get angry sometimes?” I s. and told him that I do get angry and sometimes very angry if I’m really annoyed. But I do not want others to be the targets of my letting off.  I know we are all human beings, we are equal.

S. are part of my life – I like s. a lot. I like to s. to show my love of the world, love of others. And I sincerely hope that I will be answered by other s. faces.”

I wonder where this Chinese person is 25 years later, I really like his philosophy of life. It certainly made me smile.

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Kazakhstan and “De Sunflower Ain’t De Daisy” poem

August 20, 2011 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , , ,

I read this poem from Isobel Kuhn’s book “Nests Above the Abyss” and LOVE it still today.  I believe the meaning of this poem fits the university in Astana, Kazakhstan where I used to work and teach. This flagship university only opened their doors a year ago with 500 Kazakh students but want to be known and acclaimed as the “Harvard of the steppes of Central Asia.”  If so, the administration needs to continue to work hard at their goals of keeping standards high and not lagging in achieving those goals honestly.

See what you think of this poem when thinking about Kazakhstan striving to be in the top 50 of developed nations by 2030.  I witnessed this same kind of obsessive drive with China when I taught there for two years in Harbin in 1986-88. My Chinese students were programmed to talk about what they would do for their motherland. The word “reform” kept coming up over and over again.  See where China is today economically…but to what cost as far as their human rights issues?  What does China do against their own people?  What does Kazakhstan do or NOT do to their own people who are not fortunate enough to live in the big cities of Almaty and Astana?

De sunflower ain’t de daisy and de melon ain’t de rose,

Why is dey all so crazy to be sumfin’ also dat grows?

Jes’ stick to de place you’re planted and do de best you knows.

Be de sunflower or de daisy, de melon or de rose,

Don’t be what you ain’t,

Jes’ you be what yo is.

Pass de plate if you can’t exhaust and preach.

If you’re jes’ a little pebble don’t try to be de beach.

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Question about Ukraine, My “Short” Answer

March 16, 2010 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The following is a question I got through someone who knows my aunt in North Carolina. He will be a Peace Corps volunteer soon in Ukraine, another land I lost my heart in.

I understand that you were a Peace Corps volunteer and lived in Ukraine.  I am getting ready to leave on March 29th for my training in Kiev to hopefully become a Youth Development volunteer.  So I just wanted to see what you did as a volunteer and if there were any pieces of general advice you had for me.  I am sure you can go on for awhile so certainly don’t feel like you have to write a lot!

The following is my “short answer:”

Actually I did my Peace Corps stint many years ago in the Philippines and NOT in Ukraine.  I was a PCV in 1981-83 and then learned to love Asia enough to teach in northeastern China from 1986-88.  Then I got my MA in TESOL at U of Minnesota in 1990 and was awarded a Fulbright grant to Kyrgyzstan in 1993-1995 to teach English at the start of the university that is now known as AUCA in Bishkek.  Then I got married in December of 1994 to a USDA guy I met in church in Almaty, Kazakhstan summer of 1993. We ended up in Alexandria, VA because of his job in Wash. D.C. for three years before we both were awarded Fulbrights in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1998-2000.  But we loved it so much in Ukraine that we stayed on another five years.  Then we ended up in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2007 and have been in this great country ever since.

So the short answer is no, I didn’t do Peace Corps in Ukraine but I know someone who did.  He is now working with USAID in Afghanistan and he has been meaning to come up to visit us here in Astana, Kazakhstan.  He is from the same area of North Dakota that my aunt is from.

What you REALLY need to bring with you more than the metal hangers that we get from dry cleaners is flexibility and tolerating the most infuriating things about the host culture.  Like when the drivers try to mow you down at the pedestrian crosswalk or the cars drive on the sidewalk so you not only have to look left and right but also behind and ahead of you for oncoming, careless drivers.

The Ukrainians have gone through a LOT in their long history but most heartbreaking are the last 100 years.  They are deeply divided over the Russian version of their history, especially the more west you go towards Poland.  Ask them about their grandparents or their grand grandparents, ask them what they went through with the famine of 1932-33, the Holodomor. Ask about what they endured with the Great Patriotic War, some will be willing to tell you.  Other babushkas have such painful memories that they go into a deep, troubled silence.

Knowing their history, I think, helps to explain the corruption, bribes, all the other dishonest things that go on that seem normal to them but outrageous to us westerners.  Plagiarism is not frowned on at national universities, cheating is the way you succeed at university and some of the students boast about it.

So, you have to pick your battles and love the people for who they are, not what you think they should be according to what you learned in your university training or elsewhere. Mainly if you learn their language and their culture, they will love you back.  I think you will find all the material things you could ever want. The main thing to do is bring books with you because you won’t find the kind you may want to read or use as textbooks in Ukraine.

Hope that helps.

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More Work Party Photos and Soviet Pedagogy

December 14, 2009 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My first exposure to Soviet pedagogy was in a somewhat unlikely place when I taught English for two years in Harbin, China from 1986-1988.  As teachers and foreign experts, we all lived in a foreign guest compound far removed from the Chinese masses with about five or six other Soviet experts. Add to the mix a few Japanese guys learning how to be chefs, a woman from Ireland, a British man and some other Americans and we had a mini-United Nations. We all had more in common than not, living in the strange but mysterious land of China.

I forget a few of the Soviet peoples’ names but I DO remember there was Nick from Latvia, Isa from Azerbaijan, Larissa from Minsk, Belarus, a quiet guy (because he didn’t know much English) from Georgia, another physicist who didn’t believe in dreams, maybe one or two others.  Every day for noon lunch, my American teammates and I would sit together in the big dining room as foreign experts and talk about different things related to China, teaching and life outside of China.  That was the first time I realized there was an undercurrent of nationalism going on with each country represented from the U.S.S.R. Each Russian speaker was very proud of his own nation before the U.S.S.R. took over only sharing in Russian and the same educational background. Of course they were all Soviet citizens and even though we were still in the middle of the Cold War, we all got along.  Joking and eating together, going to banquets, dances and fashion shows when our university dictated when and where we were supposed to go.  I have fond memories of our foreign guest quarters with the mix of cultures.

Two events alerted me to the difference in teaching methodology of the Soviets compared to what I was trained in as an American teacher.  First, some friends of mine in the compound wanted to learn ballroom dancing from Nick, the physicist from Latvia. Nick was an excellent dancer and swept us all off our feet.  However, it was reported back to me that he was an absolute tyrant and drill master when the girls took lessons from him.  Sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they would say, “What’s with Nick?”  I put that together with Larissa, the Russian teacher who also got very uppity about the peculiarities of her language.  Not sure if Belarussian was her first language, if that even exists. I’m guessing it does but that never came up.  They were Soviet citizens, their lingua franca was Russian.  In any case, Larrisa would take on this same persona of joyless, drill master when we asked her about some Russian phrases.

This made me realize almost twenty-five years ago that our western system of teaching was vastly different from that of the Soviets.  Teaching in China I was reacquainted with what I already knew from working as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines about teacher-centered vs. student-centered. That’s a huge given that the Chinese approach to teaching is teacher-centered but I witnessed the Soviet system was the same, teacher-centered driven. 

What have I learned these past two years since teaching in Kazakhstan about the Soviet pedagogy? The following is what I picked up off of Johnson’s Russia List, a highly subscribed blog.  The following are paraphrased observations made by a Ukrainian, Vladimir Sirotin from the Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2009 – 219. from November 30, 2009.

The founding father of Soviet pedagogy in the Stalin and post-Stalin era was Anton Makarenko (1888-1939) a Ukrainian.  He had tried to eradicate a problem that had started in Ukraine a decade before with forced collectivization that separated families.  Many Ukrainian children lost their parents due to their refusal to comply with the dictates coming from Moscow. As a result, the parents often were either killed or sent off to Siberia.  Thus, children ran in packs like wild dogs without adult supervision and were known for crimes of theft and other misdemeanors in order to survive. Once caught, there was heavy handed discipline in orphanages and schools were a result to tame these wild urchins found in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. 

Before Makarenko’s seven volumes on how to discipline, there existed Domostroi, (means “Domestic Order) an old Russian book, dating back over 500 years, which served as a handbook on how to run a patriarchal household.  It emphasized strict hierarchy and laying down punishments for disobedience, including corporal punishment. 

(To be continued tomorrow)

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Sharon’s Photos and Story from Beijing

October 12, 2009 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , , ,

Sharon receiving awardI have known Sharon since we taught together in China back in 1986-88, she was in a different location (Nanjing I think) while I was in Harbin.  Then we later taught together at the University of Minnesota working mostly with Chinese ITAs (international teaching assistants) up to 1993.  Now for the past decade or more, Sharon has been teaching in Tibet.  Please don’t miss the significance of what I just wrote in the last sentence.  Note also that China just awarded her for her service and that this big country is to the east of where I currently teach in Almaty, Kazakhstan.  As the crow flies, Sharon and I are fairly close in proximity but far apart in more ways than one.  I will let Sharon tell about her fantastic adventure up to Beijing.

I had the honor last week of shaking hands with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.  I’d almost missed the opportunity because I went to the wrong room, but was guided to the right place just in time.  I was overwhelmed by the experience, not because of who I met but more because of what I got to do… 
I was one of 100 foreigners working in China singled out to receive a “friendship award” for my contribution to the development of China.  I was flown to Beijing and put up in a nice hotel (in a suite of rooms all to myself!), invited to the State banquet celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and taken to the parade grounds for the big parade on October 1st.
 
This thing was too big for me.  I was intimidated by the other “experts” who also received the award: a nuclear physicist, a UN geologist, an aerospace engineer, a professor of rotor mechanics and another of biochemical engineering, the head of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, etc., etc., etc.  I’m just a simple English teacher who has had the honor of being granted a visa year after year to work where my heart is at home. It was indeed too big for me.  But, that was the whole point.  I wasn’t impressed with the award nearly as much as the incredible honor it was to extend blessing to the third highest leader in China.  That was an honor that didn’t come from a degree or position or level of intelligence.  It came from something far beyond myself . . . because, really, it was too big for me.
 
I brought home a plaque and a medallion.  I am again in awe that I might be considered worthy to do the work here that I so love to do.  Indications are that I may not need to worry about my visa again for a while. 

Keep in mind that whatever negative things the Kazakhs might say about all the foreigners who come to visit Kazakhstan as teachers or people who are part of the oil industry from distant lands, the biggest threat to them is their eastern neighbor.  This country of Kazakhstan is the size of 4 Texases, but only has under 18 million people.  China has over 1 billion people. Don’t you think they would love to claim KZ as their own as they have done with where Sharon currently teaches? The following photos are Sharon’s and what she put on MySpace.

Bejing paradeladies in redWomen soldiers

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Positive Feedback: Why I LOVE teaching my Kazakh students!!!

December 17, 2008 · Filed under Blogroll · Tagged , , , , ,

Back in the late 1980s I taught for two years in Harbin, Heilongjiang, in the very northeastern part of the People’s Republic of China. After returning from a nice break in Hong Kong getting R&R and buying necessities that couldn’t be found on store shelves back then, I questioned my sanity and why I was subjecting myself to such punishment in China.  Not easy to teach the masses who were so accustomed to a teacher-centered approach rather than our more familiar student-centered way of teaching.  With so many students, one could not afford to be student-centered but we, as Americans, somehow coped. 

 

After enduring the difficult train travel and acclimating to the cold, Minnesota-like temperatures in Harbin, and once I got in front of my eager, industrious students, I knew why I loved teaching again. A renewed sense of calling always came when I looked at the inscrutable faces of my Chinese students who had happy smiles for me, glad that I had returned as their highly esteemed teacher. When I taught Speaking and Listening at H.I.T. (Harbin Institute of Technology) I had in one class about 60 students in one big classroom.  In a land of 1 billion people, 60 people is a drop in the bucket.  How did I ever manage to work with all these students? I think one semester I had about 250 students to teach. How did I grade them all?

 

I’m happy to have a maximum of 18 in each of my classes at my current university and we have very nice classrooms in the New Building.  That is, when the computer works at 8:30 a.m. every morning, otherwise I would go into my Plan B or Plan C mode to cope with the Internet not working.  My Listening and Notetaking II class gave me informative feedback about problems they encountered with my class but mostly positive feedback that I’ll consider for next semester.

 

For me, very difficult to understand everything, sometimes even main points.  And the record was very fast.  I think my first problem is lack of vocabulary.

 

It is very clear to understand, but sometimes using the slangs or unusual words is very hard to know.

 

The speed of speech! When it’s too fast, you can’t even get the idea of the dialog.  Or 17 minutes lecture, everything was clear, but boring!

 

The most difficult part is to catch ending of some words (as we say the British “eat” the endings).  American’s accent is easier to understand (;-) And as I have been to America, I got used to understanding American English.

 

I think American English is easier because people from America use simple words but sometimes they use many slang and phrasal verbs that is hard.

 

Actually this class with Mrs. K. differs from other ELN 1201 classes, we have listened to not only taped voice, but we had live persons, hearing their stories.  I wish that all of ELN courses could be like ours!

 

I would want to have more guest lecturers (;-) I liked and enjoyed it. Communicating to natives is always good.

 

The following student was in my listening class but also in my reading and writing class.  She wrote:  “Have a wonderful Christmas! and thank you very much for this semester! I enjoyed it very much, it was a lot of fun and new interesting material!”

 

Another reading and writing student who just returned from a quick trip to New York wrote the following: I’m so happy to receive the message from you. I had very fruitful time in NY… Additionally, I visited my friend studying in Columbia University, she earning her Master Degree, And I helped her with full filling APA style of her project work, you can be proud of your student =), because I even helped in USA with my knowledge of ERW. It was very little contribution, but in any case I’m thankful for you, my dear teacher!

 

At the beginning of your course, I was hating all that APA and etc stuff, but finally, now I can write properly and academically, and all of that because of you!  Thank you very much, and I’m very sad that semester has already finished.

 

I believe that you will have more creative and ambitious students, who need for your help, help in life skills. 

 

Also, I think that your work in searching info about USSR is very-very important, because no one is interested so deep in our culture and history before. Moreover, you know, that I found very interesting book in Russian language written by Kazakh authors about the USSR system, traditions, Labor camps and about all that related information in very interesting, like dialog, informal style. I hope it can help in your research.   

 

Finally, “thank you for this course!!! It was really great, interesting, understandable. And especially thank you for your teaching!!! Thank you! =)

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