Post by burlives on Feb 26, 2004 10:51:37 GMT 7
So I'm at my new school now and I have been for about five days. It's well past the start of the term but they let me turn up late for several muddled reasons. It's nice here, poor enough to still have VSO, which is my kind of scene for now, and I'm just observing with interest some of the things that have happened today.
I'm supposed to go to the provincial capital for the medical examiniation and it's a four hour drive. Yesterday I was told there would be a car going with leaders for a meeting so I should meet my own dean before leaving at 9:30. I would get my timetable, have some kind of sit-down and then we would all go get carsick together. At 9, after a cold shower because they turn off the water supply at 11 each night and it somehow makes the hot water system shut down too, I had the telephone call telling me there would be no meeting and the jolly jaunt to the big smoke would be at 2. I suggested to my hapless but pleasant informant that I would eventually need to know where and when I should teach and she told me that the dean would tell me after we had been to the capital.
So why did the dean not simply hand a timetable to the intermediary who would then hand it to me?
Of course it's a power thing. It's the other side of "friendship." If he withholds whatever it is that he can withhold, then people have to be nice to him. It's okay, I don't mind,I know I can more or less adapt whatever I end up being shafted with. But it's that practice, that habit of holding on to whatever is in your realm, that interests me. That practice seems to be basic in China and it's what makes every service partisan. I've seen it in leaders of every stripe, teachers, doctors, officials, and for god's sake it happens in ordinary relationships too -- tien bless girlfriends one and all, I don't know what the boys are like.
And apparently Chinese people are more practical than western people. After a few years of hearing that one and trying to join it up with the facts, I started protesting. It turns out that "practical" is how Chinese translate a particular word that they use on themselves to mean that Chinese are more concerned with material things.
Which leads me back to the putative post-grad of a previous posting. She's going to find a way into one of the big Shanghai schools. She reports that she will find a way if she really wants to but the genuine problem is that she has no guanxi with anyone there.
She probably will too. In a Chinese system, Chinese know what to do.
So, um, yeah. So much for that.
I'm supposed to go to the provincial capital for the medical examiniation and it's a four hour drive. Yesterday I was told there would be a car going with leaders for a meeting so I should meet my own dean before leaving at 9:30. I would get my timetable, have some kind of sit-down and then we would all go get carsick together. At 9, after a cold shower because they turn off the water supply at 11 each night and it somehow makes the hot water system shut down too, I had the telephone call telling me there would be no meeting and the jolly jaunt to the big smoke would be at 2. I suggested to my hapless but pleasant informant that I would eventually need to know where and when I should teach and she told me that the dean would tell me after we had been to the capital.
So why did the dean not simply hand a timetable to the intermediary who would then hand it to me?
Of course it's a power thing. It's the other side of "friendship." If he withholds whatever it is that he can withhold, then people have to be nice to him. It's okay, I don't mind,I know I can more or less adapt whatever I end up being shafted with. But it's that practice, that habit of holding on to whatever is in your realm, that interests me. That practice seems to be basic in China and it's what makes every service partisan. I've seen it in leaders of every stripe, teachers, doctors, officials, and for god's sake it happens in ordinary relationships too -- tien bless girlfriends one and all, I don't know what the boys are like.
And apparently Chinese people are more practical than western people. After a few years of hearing that one and trying to join it up with the facts, I started protesting. It turns out that "practical" is how Chinese translate a particular word that they use on themselves to mean that Chinese are more concerned with material things.
Which leads me back to the putative post-grad of a previous posting. She's going to find a way into one of the big Shanghai schools. She reports that she will find a way if she really wants to but the genuine problem is that she has no guanxi with anyone there.
She probably will too. In a Chinese system, Chinese know what to do.
So, um, yeah. So much for that.
