It has been a long time since I last blogged. There are two reasons for this:
- The Chinese government placed a firewall on Gmail Blogger, along with Facebook, Youtube, Hulu, and other sites.
- I am now an employee of the Chinese government and was reluctant to break protocol.
So much has happened in the last eighteen months, so I'm not going to bore you with all the details. I graduated from B-School at Pepperdine; had knee surgery AGAIN after tearing another ligament in my knee; moved to China for what I thought would be a vacation; accepted a job at Renmin University (The third-ranked university in the capital city) teaching Business English and an elective Business course; and now I am an employee of the Chinese government and a well-respected member of the Chinese community. WTF....WTF, indeed!
I live inside the campus walls of Renmin University (The People's University), and it is the weirdest place on Earth. I think they must have messed up my housing assignment because instead of moving me into a cozy building with fellow like-minded Westerners I was placed in a building that looks like it was built one-thousand years ago. The university used to have a deal where if teachers were employed by the school for a certain number of years, then in return they would give them free housing fo' life. So all of my neighbors are ancient Chinamen whose average age is 164. In the building I am living in there is only one other apartment with younger people (not that I am that young), and nobody speaks more than a few words of English. My apartment is O.K., with a: living room, bathroom (about the size of a tiny closet), bedroom, and kitchen. However, the bathroom is designed so that the shower head and the toilet are facing each other...I HATE IT! Also, whoever lives in the apartment next to mine must has a piano; and this mystery person plays the piano all day, and all night, and is most definitely the worst piano player on the planet. It's like a blind drunk man has been forced to play piano as many hours as humanly possible or he will be eaten by a dragon, and I am the one who must face his wrath. If I ever get a chance, I'm taking a baseball bat to the piano.
There is a courtyard, where an old Chinese woman has created "Cat City". Since the old Chinese are the definition of Old Skool, they have taken over all of the areas in between apartments that in most societies would be used by the whole instead of the few. It is like I'm living on gang turf, and a tough bunch of rough senior Chinese have become the equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods combined. Anyways, this woman has taken every stray board she could find to create a shanty town for stray cats, all together there are twelve cats in "Cat City" and their numbers are growing. There are Chinese men playing Chinese checkers all day long; Chinese doing their laundry outsideby hand; Chinese playing badminton from the early morning until the night, and Chinese people who look at me as if they have seen a ghost; so in a nutshell you could say I don't exactly fit in around here.
The only group of other young people in my building are these five Archaelogy major girls who live in the apartment upstairs and dance to Lady Gaga music sometimes until late at night. This would be a lot funnier if we didn't share a common wall, and it makes life more than difficult when I hear their pit-pattering feed dancing to the beat at the midnight hour. A few nights ago a piece of the wall celing actually broke and hit me in the head while I was sleeping...not cool. One of the girls bought a rabbit about a month ago from a street peddler and it had been living in a cage not to far away from cat city in the courtyard area. Why she didn't move it into the safer confines of their apartment I still don't really understand, but the rabbit seemed to be a huge hit with the old fogie community that domintes the streets in my hood. Anyways, the girls (five of them live in the same size apartment as me) grew extremely attached to the rabbit, and for a rabbit this white furball appeared to be living a nice existence. This last Friday night I went out to dinner with some friends and around eight P.M. I walked by the rabbit cage and saw this spooky ancient Chinaman with less teeth than I have fingers staring at the rabbit like he either wanted to: make love to the rabbit, or eat the rabbit. At the time I didn't think much of it but when I woke up the next morning the rabbit was gone. I called the girls and they said that they were told by one of the neighbors at exactly 8:15 P.M. last night that the rabbit was not in the cage, and by simple process of elimination I deduced that this old Chinaman must have taken the rabbit to his room for either a one-night stand or to to take a hot bath in a boiling cauldron or water
The girls were sad at first but not manic as they had assumed that the rabbit must have escaped his cage and would come back soon. I explained to them that I was pretty sure this old Chinese fellow I had seen last night had taken the rabbit, and that he most definitely ATE the rabbit. I am such an idiot! For the last 48 hours the five girls have been crying non-stop. Their screaming, wailing, and other random extremely loud acts of sadness have made it so that I have not slept more than a few hours for the last two days. If I see that Chinaman who ate the rabbit I am going to punch him in the face.
I think that's enough blogging for now, but next time I will get into the magnificent mockery I have made of the Chinese educational system. I have taken my role of teacher and designed it around the principle that "The teacher is always right". Therefore, I've been running the show like a young dictator in his prime and have become extremely fond of the omnipotent powers that I now possess. It's way better than invisibility. The students never question me and do exactly as I say. For those students that don't already have English names, I have ruled that it is the teacher's job to also give them American names. In a tribute to many of my friends from the United States I have put together quite an exotic assortment of rather unusual named students. Some people collect stamps, I collect weird names for Chinese students, so far I have: Caesar (four times over), Mauricio, Georgie, Smokey, Grouse, Maradona, Esperanza, and many, many more. I just can't imagine that there are a lot of Chinese people these days calling themselves Mauricio. I also have developed a rather effective policy towards coming to class late...public embarrassment. I make any student who comes in late sing a song of my choosing. I love it when they tell me that they hate to sing, as this is exactly the answer I am looking for.
That's it for now, next time I'll post some pictures of my students and discuss some of the funnier stories I have experienced as a teacher/white devil. The irony is that the university thinks I am a kind and wonderful man and have already offered me a contract extension complete with more money and power.
It's good to be back,
Professor Atkinson
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