Beyond Where the Sidewalk Ends

With a little time on my hands, let me back the train up to: Reflective Point #2: Beyond Where the Sidewalk Ends.

On Monday and Thursday mornings I get up at 6:45AM so that I can be on a bus by 7:30AM in order to get to my 8:30AM class—it takes a while to go beyond where the sidewalk ends.

Actually, if we were being technical, it would be beyond where the road ends, but I figured an allusion to Silverstein is always appropriate. You see, on Mondays and Thursdays I teach Oral English to the first years at Yunnan University’s Yang Pu (pronounced yawng poo) campus (check out my Yang Pu photo album for pics). The Yang Pu campus is located about a 45-minute’s drive outside of Kunming in a suburb surprisingly enough called Yang Pu. Feeling a crunch for space in the middle of town, Yunnan University has recently decided to create an entirely new campus out in the middle-of-nowhere China that will eventually house all of the university’s undergraduate programs. Currently it’s where the first years and the Computer Science majors have been relegated to.

Although it’s a pain to get up quite so early to get out there in time (not to mention the fact that by the time I do actually arrive my coffee high has already worn off), I actually do enjoy teaching out there. Partially it’s because of the students—they’re all still naïve little first years (although they’re getting less and less so as the semester progresses), which means that they really listen to me and do what I tell them. They really are a contrast to my sophomores who are already somewhat jaded about this whole learning thing. I also think part of the reason I enjoy it is because of the campus itself. It’s brand new, which I do appreciate believe you me, but it’s more than that. The location of the campus is actually quite spectacular. From my classrooms I can see the hills surrounding Kunming as well as into downtown a bit (that’s assuming it’s not too smoggy). Actually, the thing that makes it quite surreal is the fact that the distance does always seem to be obscured by smog, and the sun rising through the morning mist really makes it feel like the campus is set on top of clouds.

I must admit though, that my favorite part of campus is a street that I’ve dubbed Memory Lane…I love making up English names for different places here, but that’s another story. Anyway, the Chinese teaching method strongly emphasizes rote memorization of most anything. That means that in the mornings before classes I see usually around 20-30 students lining that particular street reciting into memory their various dialogues for their classes. I should take a video of it just because it is so funny! It sounds something like: “I am a, I am a, I am a, I am a, se-tu-den-te. Stu-den-te. Stu-den-te. I am a stu-den-te.” And it just keeps going on like that. I do feel a bit guilty about this, but sometimes I just walk by and when I can’t understand a word that they’re saying even though it’s in English, I just laugh inside and try my hardest not to sit down with them and try to correct their pronunciation and whatnot. It’s just that it sounds so funny, and only makes me believe that memorization like that is not effective—it’s communicative language production that is important!

Of course, the students view it as somewhat of a gulag. They have to have passes to get on the buses to go back into the city during the week (otherwise there’s not enough room for all the teachers). Also, their internet access out there is SUPER slow. That’s something they’re going to have to fix if they ever expect to move everybody out to that campus. The students also aren’t allowed to drink on campus, which they’re not big fans of. On the other hand though, much like Whitman being in the middle of nowhere, it really does create a strong community there. Another side effect of the separation is that I’m one of three Westerners on the campus which makes me somewhat of a celebrity. I gave somewhat of an impromptu motivational speech about speaking English the other day for a club that invited me to speak there, and the day after when I had classes I had people recognize me and say hi in the cafeteria. China certainly is not the place to come if you don’t like being the center of attention! Luckily I’m full enough of myself that I don’t mind too much ;o).