This past weekend was Cornelia's birthday (a German teacher here) and we celebrated with lots of tasty Chinese dishes at her favorite restaurant along with plenty of cupcakes. One of the topics of conversation over cake was our students' habits of plagiarism, copying and cheating. All of the English and German teachers here have had plenty of trouble with this issue and were eager to talk about it.

During my first semester here, it was very common to receive two homework assignments that were exactly alike along with other assignments that were obviously copied from the internet. During exams, it was common to see students trying to cheat either by sneaking peeks at notes or by "working together" with other students. Coming from attending and teaching at colleges in the U.S.A. where this kind of behavior can get you a failing grade or even expulsion, I was initially shocked, surprised and appalled. Quickly, however, I realized that like just about everything, things are quite different in China.

I've talked with lots of Chinese teachers, students and working professionals about this issue and nobody seems very concerned - plagiarism is pretty much considered the norm and a lot of people do it. My students never considered that it was a big deal to copy from each other or from the internet as long as they turned in the assignment and that it was done "well." Other students lamented that because they are assigned so many papers, it's impossible to do everything in your own words and that the teachers don't read them anyway so it doesn't matter.

Consider also the students' role models. The professors at the university level are pressed to publish constantly. To solve this problem, most just take a paper from the internet or buy an article that is already written and then pay a journal to publish it. Many Chinese teachers have complained to me that the only way to get published in China is to know someone or to pay a lot of money to the publisher. As long as their name appears under the title of a published article, they are in the clear for the next year - it doesn't really matter if it's original research or not. Of course all of the Chinese teachers desperately want to be published in an American or European journal. "They are the best and most difficult to be published in" they tell me and then ask if I have any connections to help them get published in the U.S.

Since it's kind of hard to change the system, we have had to get creative in our assignments and exam design. Now my assignments require personal, creative responses (there's still the problem with students using internet translator programs however) and my exams are all short answer and essay. Doing oral exams or some kind of performance is another option though it takes a lot of time. These ideas help a little bit, but you still get some responses like what one of Sean's students wrote the other day.

For a class assignment one week the student had to describe his or her dream in life and for the next week they wrote about the types of food they usually eat and if their lifestyle was healthy or not. Both of the excerpts are from the same student and make for an interesting comparison. As a teacher, what would you do?

My dream of life is like this: every day I will practice kungfu wearing a white T-shirt at the bottom of a hill with a lot of pine trees. There is a little river nearby the hill. I will build a garden with a lot of strange things. It is very interesting to plant flowers and feed lots of rabbits. I will also plant all kinds of vegetables and medical plants in my garden and I can get to know what plants cure illness. Now I know a little about this. I like medical knowledges very much. I wonder more and more about them. Learning new things is my whole life and I feel rich. I am eager to learn more so I hope someone would like to help me. You are never too young to study things and you are never old to learn things that you like to do. Life is rich in looking for knowledge.
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This past week I was a judge for a drama competition in English put on by our university students. Watching plays was more interesting than judging speeches (usually wordy monologues extolling the virtues of China) or singing (usually cheesy romantic songs - for example: Can You Feel the Love Tonight, My Heart Will Go On, You Raise Me Up, Take Me To Your Heart etc.).

In my experience, Chinese university students have always enjoyed participating in plays. Most of them have a flair for being dramatic, emotional and intense. It's a strange phenomenon being that in class they appear as shy and quiet lambs. Put them on the stage or in front of the class, however and the tiger comes out. The plays that they come up with are extremely entertaining to observe not only because of the smattering of Chinglish and mistranslations but mainly because of the theme and plot. It always almost involves a love story. Without fail there is an enormous amount of giggling and exaggerated actions. It's kind of like watching a middle school or high school production. Since it's hard to understand the students at times, we were given copies of the scripts. Here's the script of the winning play, just so you can see what we're dealing with here. I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did.


Band: This music is played in honor of the girl of today - Miss Kirra. Let's wish her a happy birthday!
Kirra: Welcome to my birthday party! Let's enjoy the charm of youth in the beautiful music at this beautiful night. Let's enjoy the happy moments with all our heart!
(people begin to dance)

Hero: Are you a friend of Kirra?
Heroine: Yeah. We often see each other at library.
Hero: You look very familiar to me. I think we must have met each other somewhere before.
Heroine: Really? Probably it's because we live on so small a campus.
Hero: You look so very different!
Heroine: Thanks. But, can you tell me something more?
Hero: Oh, it's only a feeling. Something more? Hope I will have the chance. (Silent for a moment then continues) Can I have the chance? (Looks at the heroine firmly. They begin to dance).

Heroine: Kirra, who is the boy that danced with me just now?
Kirra: Oh, he is a senior in grade four. An excellent boy. He is going to study abroad.
Heroine: Oh, really?

Heroine's monologue: What an excellent boy! How great it feels to dance with him! But he is to study abroad and I am to graduate next year. I am still not sure where to go then. Buddha says, you look back at him for five hundred times in a previous life, so you win a chance of rubbing shoulders with him in the present one. It is such a rare chance to meet him. Must I give it up? (paces to and fro, hesitates, finally looking at the starry night she comes to a decision) Besides love, we have more important things in our life. We are still young, we have the whole world to wander and to conquer. We shouldn't stop our steps of pursuit for romantic feelings. Let me just pray for his happiness and keep it in my heart that I once loved such a man when I was a young and innocent girl.

Hero: Will you take these flowers from me? I want to confess that you are the special person for me.
Heroine: Thanks for these flowers! Now you are going to study abroad, and between us will be vast waters of the Pacific Ocean. I have to strive hard to come across that distance. But we can be friends now. And if Destiny allows we will see each other again. Place of meeting? Probably at the university you are going to study!
Hero: I can only hope. My heart will look for your brown eyes forever.

After fighting an infection for a bit and needing some extra health paperwork filled out for NOLS I decided to bite the bullet and pay a visit to Changzhou's biggest hospital for a full physical exam figuring that I could probably do it cheaper here than at home in the states. This turned out to be true, my morning at the hospital cost me in total about $30 but it was quite the experience. I wish I would have brought my camera.

Yesterday, when I stopped in to see "Candy" (the assistant appointed to help us with all things Chinese) I dropped off my passport for a visa extension and also asked if she would go with me to the hospital to get a physical. She wasn't excited. But she said she would meet me the next day at 8 a.m. to go to the biggest and best hospital in Changzhou.

After a short cab ride, we walked in to the gigantic building that was a hospital. It was huge, noisy, loud and absolutely swollen with people. There were so many things going on and so many different lines, counters and windows that it felt like a mixture between a circus and a bank. We got in one of the lines which Candy explained to me was to get a number to see a doctor. I was given a personal patient ID swipe card, a little notebook and then had to pay $1. Among the many differences between a Chinese and American hospital, the ones I noticed the most was how many times money changes hands and how you pay for each step of the medical process separately. For example, the fee for me to actually sit down and talk with a doctor was only $1.

After this we went to another place to wait to see the doctor. Candy had told me to bring plenty of things to do as we might have to wait a long time. Luckily (or unluckily) I have 80 final exams to grade which are mostly short answer and essays which kept me busy during the wait. People were smoking in the waiting room and it was very crowded. Everyone was watching a big digital screen at the front of the room which showed you your name and number and how far you were in line. It was easy to watch for my name as it was all Chinese gibberish and then my name in big block letters "SARAH".

When I entered the "consultation room" there was absolutely no privacy. All of the other patients who were also waiting crowded in to see what was going on and to listen to what we were talking about. It was very strange, funny and incredibly intrusive but I guess in a country of a billion people it's hard to have privacy. The doctor spoke incredible English and was delighted to practice with me and asked me all sorts of questions, most of which seemed very unrelated to physical health but whatever. Then he had me step to the side in an adjacent but still highly visible room where I had to take everything off (no gowns or robes here) so he could do the physical. After he drew blood, took saliva samples and had me pee in a cup, he gave all of my "specimens" in little jars to me, open to the air, for me to take down to the lab by myself. I felt like I was in micro. lab all over again.

While navigating through crowds of people and 3 escalators, I managed not to spill anything and we made it to the third counter of the day where I paid $11 to have all of my samples analyzed. I literally handed all of them to one of the many technicians working on microscopes. After thirty minutes I received a printout of the results at which point we had to go back up to the 5th floor to see the doctor again for the interpretation. He claimed me to be pretty healthy, gave me some antibiotics and filled out some forms.

We went to the last counter where I handed over the prescription, paid $18 and received my medicine in less than 5 seconds. The whole system in this hospital works like a well-oiled machine. Without an appointment and just by showing up at 9 in the morning, I was out of there at 11:30. If you can handle: no privacy, extremely curious Chinese onlookers who will watch and listen to everything, smoke, questionable cleanliness, humoring doctors who want to practice their English and say things like "This is called a 'speculum', right?", carrying your own samples everywhere and medicine that can only be interpreted by your Chinese friends, then visiting a Chinese hospital is definitely the choice for you.

On Thursday night, the night of our overnight train trip to Beijing, Qin Chen arrived home from work with a huge bag of food for the road - it looked like she had bought enough food for a week. In the bag were bowls of instant noodles (or "convenient noodles" as my students call them), three cucumbers, strange pastries for the morning, bottles of water and lots of snacks. Alas, there were no spicy chicken feet. Seeing giant food bags are a very common sight in Chinese train stations because the food served on board is expensive (and not very good) and also because many people will genuinely be on the train for more than 30 hours straight. Fortunately, our trip was only 12 hours long.


Once we got to the hard sleeper section of our train we enjoyed many games of Chinese poker (which I have come to love and Qin Chen is really good at) before turning in for the night. It's a fun feeling to fall asleep in one city and wake up entirely in another. We reached Beijing at around 11:30 in the morning and immediately headed off in the direction of Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.


Once we checked our bags at the handy (and free) luggage storage area at the gate and paid our 60 RMB entrance fee, we set out to explore the impossibly huge and very touristy historic Chinese attraction. The Forbidden City is called as such because it was off limits for over 500 years. It's famous because it's one of the largest and well-preserved group of ancient Chinese buildings. The Forbidden City was where two dynasties of emperors lived - the Ming and the Qing. There are loads of halls, gates, rooms and gardens to explore which could potentially take all day. We opted to walk around on our own and check out areas that looked interesting. Don't get me wrong, it was really cool, but after about 3 hours all the temples and gates start to look the same.


My favorite place was the Imperial garden which was very picturesque with small pagodas, lots of flowers and trees and bridges over streams. It was a nice change from the "Hall of Mental Cultivation", "Divine Military Genius Gate", "Gate of Supreme Harmony", Hall of Middle Harmony", "Hall of Preserving Harmony", "Palace of Heavenly Purity", "Hall of Joyful Longevity", "Hall of Character Cultivation" etc., etc. You get my drift.


In typical Chinese fashion we took many, many pictures. Qin Chen was worried the whole trip about being the "third wheel". But we told her that if anyone asked, we would just tell them that she was our adopted Chinese child. This did not seem to appease her worries.


After touring around, we headed for a nearby mall for some food and shopping before taking the subway to meet Daniel's dad, Bob Davis. I was super excited to meet Bob for three reasons: 1) it's always fun to meet friends' parents and see how they are alike or different 2) Bob has been a journalist for the Wall Street Journal for over 30 years and I was curious what it was like to be a writer living abroad and 3) We didn't know a whole lot about Beijing and were eager to learn tips and information from a local living there.


Hanging out with Bob turned out to be a blast. After meeting up near his office we got dinner and then walked to his place which was amazing. Sean, Qin Chen and I all agreed that he was like Daniel in so many ways - his way of speaking, eyes, gestures . . . everything. Bob was particularly busy that day as he was covering the big IMF story. He actually had to do an interview online and on camera as soon as we got home from dinner. I was impressed, to say the least. The life of a journalist living abroad, though filled with a lot of hard work, seems to be also a little glamorous.


We all turned in early that night as we had to be up at an insanely early hour to catch the bus to run the Great Wall Marathon the next day. It was a fun but tiring Friday!

What a fantastic but exhausting weekend! Our overnight train pulled into Changzhou at about 6am this morning after an action-packed weekend of sight-seeing and running.


The biggest event of the weekend was the Great Wall Marathon - a ridiculously tough, steep and brutal race. I didn't do the whole thing (thank goodness) but the half marathon was still plenty challenging enough for me. Sean, however, did complete the entire race in 5 hours and 34 minutes. His first words out of his mouth after crossing the finish line were, "I'm never, ever doing that again."


During the weekend we stayed with Daniel's (teacher from last year) dad who works for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing. He had also decided to join in the race and ran the 10k. To get to the race on Saturday morning we were up at 2:45am to get to the bus pick-up point for a 3 hour ride to the wall. The weather couldn't have been more perfect - I don't think I have ever seen a bluer sky in China. Though the day started out a bit chilly, it eventually transformed into a breezy, dry, 70-degree paradise for running.


There were only about 2000 runners in total for all of the events - but most of them looked like serious runners and had come from all over the world to participate in this "adventure" marathon. I was immediately intimidated. While we slurped our breakfast noodles and chugged coffee in a restaurant near the wall we listened to conversations of other runners' conquests of past triathlons and ultra-marathons while watching them get in their zone and do some elaborate pre-race preparations. Hard-core runners are kind of a freaky bunch, to be honest.


While Sean had trained a lot harder than I had and was ready to push himself to the limit, my goal was to have fun, take some pictures and to finish. Qin Chen, my roommate, had also come along as our official "spectator" (even spectators had to buy a separate ticket to participate). Sean and I started in the "slow" corral which meant that we began our race 10 minutes after the professionals.


The race itself was probably one of the hardest races I have ever tried. The first 3 miles were steep uphill on a road leading up to the wall and after that it was 2 miles of stairs up and down dips in the mountains. This was insane. Not only were the steps uneven and hard to manage but the sheer number of stairs and the steepness of the grade was unlike anything I could have prepared for. Needless to say, I walked a lot. Actually, everyone did. You had to. At times, the wall got so thin that bottlenecks formed and we had to wait for 10-20 minutes for everyone to pass through tricky and dangerous sections. It was more of an adventure "hike" with occasional jogging instead of a marathon.


I was very happy to be off the wall and after that we ran through a nearby town. This was a uniquely Chinese experience as I was passed by trucks filled with pigs, had to run through manure, farmland, kick chickens out of my way and negotiate the course through tiny alleys. It was hilarious. All of the other runners were friendly and excited and we frequently stopped to take pictures of each other - it was a great atmosphere and experience to be a part of. Many people wore outfits to represent their countries. There were Canadians in hockey jerseys, Brazilians in soccer paraphernalia, South Africans who blew on vuvuzelas the entire way and Frenchmen with flags painted on their faces.


During the whole route, Chinese children shouted "Jiāyóu!" (add gas!) while clapping their hands, yelling "Ni hao" and "Hello" and handing us flowers (not very useful but a nice gesture nonetheless). Other children and their parents gathered up the empty plastic bottles that the runners tossed on the ground to be turned in for cash. My favorite groups of bystanders were the old Chinese men who sat on tiny stools, smoked cigarettes and shook their heads and muttered while watching the crazy, scantily clad runners dash in front of them.


It was a great day without any injuries, complications or bad weather and I feel lucky that I was able to be a part of it. That being said, I have no desire ever to run on the great wall again. Once is enough.

This is going to be a short post as we are leaving on the 11:40pm overnight train to Beijing to run the Great Wall Marathon on Saturday (and right now it's 10pm). Well, I'm running the 1/2 marathon and Sean is going to run the full one. We are staying with Daniel's (previous teacher) dad who is going to be running the 10k.

I'm feeling a little scatterbrained as these last few days have been a little hectic. Lots of friends have left this week so there were goodbye parties aplenty and last night we all celebrated Sean's birthday. In the meantime I've been trying to write a final exam which I will give to my students hours after arriving back in Changzhou on Monday.

Anyway, I'm off to the train station - I'll keep you posted on how the race went!

These past few days the weather has been perfect - 70s, warm, breezy and sunny and everyone has wanted to be outside all day. We've been busy and there's been lots of fun things going on.


This week has been especially fun for me as my students have "practical training" which means I have the week off. This worked out well as this week we have the faculty/staff co-ed volleyball tournament, Sean's birthday party, the Germans' goodbye party (they called it the German Sausage Fest), an ultimate frisbee game or two on campus and our departure for Beijing on Thursday night.

Playing volleyball has been hilarious. Our Foreign Language Department team makes up in spirit for what we lack in skill (which is a lot). We have lost each game by at least 12 points but have had a blast playing together.


A couple of afternoons Sean has gotten 10 people together to play ultimate frisbee. Most of these people had never played before but everyone that played for the first time walked away happy and eager to play again (and not to mention out of breath and sweaty).


By far, the most interesting event of the week was the "German Sausage Fest" which was the goodbye party the German interns held for their friends and students. They had been wanting to do a real outside barbecue with authentic German hot dogs, bread and beer. They bought a grill, charcoal and all of the supplies and after coaxing the charcoal for awhile we had a delicious feast. The students were absolutely curious and delighted by the whole ordeal. My favorite part of the night was watching one of the Chinese students man the grill with chopsticks.


Tomorrow night is Sean's birthday party which is doubling as the Germans' goodbye party as they leave the next day for Shanghai for their flight home. While all of the events and parties are lots of fun, they are bittersweet as they bring us one step closer to bidding farewell to the Middle Kingdom and all of our friends we've met here. It's going to be ridiculously hard to leave.

Yesterday, when I was teaching at my part-time job, a girl walked in to my class wearing sunglasses even though it was 8:00 in the evening. She apologized for being late and then sat down as if nothing were odd about her sporting shades indoors during class and at night.

When I asked her what was going on, she said that she had just had "double eyelid surgery" the day before. I have heard about this popular phenomenon here in China as most of my female students (and my roommate) want to get this done. Since the other students (all female) in the class also wanted to have this surgery and I was extremely curious about the whole process, we spent the rest of the class talking about the procedure and cosmetic surgery in general.


Double eyelid surgery is also called "blepharoplasty" and is the process in which the skin around the eye is reshaped in order to create an upper eyelid with a crease. Many Chinese women want to not only have this second crease but they also want to have "bigger-looking eyes." At least once a day, a Chinese student or friend comments to me on the shape of my eyes saying things like, "I want your eyes", "your eyes are so big", "how do you grow your long eyelashes" etc. It's pretty out of control.

The issue of eye size is hard to understand for me as I grew up in a place where we don't really talk about eyes. But here, talking about eyes is extremely common. For example, when describing other people in China, it's common for a Chinese to say something like "she has really small eyes" or "he has big eyes." My roommate, Qin Chen, is convinced that she has particularly small eyes and is very disappointed and self-conscious about them. To insult her, her other Chinese friends say things like, "Qin Chen, where are your eyes? I can't see them!"
Because of this, the eye surgery business is booming and while "Nancy", my student with the sunglasses and new eyelids, explained the process my other students leaned in eagerly to hear what she had to say. Nancy said that the procedure took about 30 minutes and didn't involve full anaesthesia - they just numbed her eyes. It cost about 1000 RMB (about $155) which is a lot when most twenty-something females in China make about 2000-3000 RMB/month. Nancy said that it didn't really hurt that much and that she will be able to go sans sunglasses in just two days. She did take them off to let us see her new eyelids and there was much oohing and aahing around the table. She was very happy with the result and recommended the surgery to the others with full confidence.

We went around the table talking about what kinds of surgery each student wanted. Some examples that they wanted were to change the shape of their face from round to oval, getting a "higher" nose and getting breast implants. When I asked Nancy if she could see better with her new eyes she said that she didn't notice any difference; she said she just wanted to do the surgery for the way it looks. At the end of class my students kept exclaiming how lucky I was that I was born with natural double eyelids. While I assured them that I thought the Asian look was gorgeous, sleek and beautiful and that they shouldn't change a thing, they just waved me away and said I didn't understand. They're right, I don't.

This week is my last week of classes at the university. Next week my students have a week of "practical training" where they go back to their home towns and work with teachers or businesses in the fields of education, translation and international trade. The week after that they take the final exam for the course.

This week in class they presented their skits that they have been working on. Each semester I try to have a lesson in which they do the talking and presenting but it has been really difficult for me to find something that works well in China. In the past, when I have asked them do to a presentation, the students just copy information from the internet and the presentations are boring and useless. When I have had them try and actually teach or lead a class the results were equally unimpressive. When I have tried skits in the past they were just O.K. so I tried to set them up and prepare them better this time.

In the students' textbook for the European History course there were a lot of famous Bible stories. For a change, I thought that they could act them out instead of having me explain them in the form of a lecture. I let them work in groups of 2-5 and told them to prepare a short skit 5-10 minutes long in informal English. The passages in the book were written in very old and formal English. I encouraged the students to have fun, be creative, improvise and make the skits relative to today's life. Some of them were able to do this very well and others tanked horribly.

Here are the stories that were chosen by the students:

The resurrection
The nativity story
The woman at the well
Lazarus
The prodigal son
David and Goliath
Creation/Adam and Eve
Noah and the ark
Cain and Abel

Some moments that I particularly enjoyed while viewing the skits:

-A line from the "Resurrection" skit: "What? Jesus is not in the tomb? You're pulling my leg!"
-Many students made bilingual name tags for their characters and had different signs for acts and scenes
-During the "Prodigal son" skit, the younger son went and spent all his money on Chinese Mahjong gambling and going to sing karaoke at various KTVs.
-The use of props was pretty funny and creative. One of my favorites was wearing a backpack on backwards to represent pregnancy.
-While we watched one version of "David and Goliath" the actors had all of us in the audience sing a song that I remember from childhood
-Many plays included music to go along with actions that the students provided from their cell phones. Others had videos/pictures on the power point for scenery or natural disasters (earthquakes, floods etc.)

When they are in class, my students are usually quiet and shy as mice but when they get up in front of class to perform or sing they completely transform into giggling, emotional, dramatic and hilarious comics. It's a surprising change for me and I wish I would have gotten some of the skits on video. I hope they learned some of the stories or at least the morals they were trying to teach but if all else failed at least we got to do something different and they had some fun.

Last weekend we celebrated Jordan's birthday by going out to dinner and then to the Europe bar. All of the other foreign teachers came out to celebrate along with the German interns. We all had a lot of fun as Jordan definitely knows how to celebrate a birthday.


First we went to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant and then we had cake and champagne at the Europe club. We played some pool and darts and after a lot of chatting and mingling, Qin Chen and I went home while the rest of the group went to a club for some late-night dancing and who knows what other shenanigans.


It was a really fun night hanging out with everyone and it just reminds me of how much we are going to miss everyone. The Germans leave next week as they were only here for a three month internship. Then in late June some of the other foreign teachers head back to the U.S. or Germany and on July 5 Sean and I go home.


What's everyone doing next year? Ariana is going to get a job in some area of law and hopefully go to law school, David is returning to JSTU for another year of teaching in Changzhou, Jordan is moving north near Beijing with his Chinese girlfriend, April, Annika and Cornelia are also coming back to teach German here for another year. Meanwhile, Qin Chen is looking for a new job and is also looking for a new place to live when I leave . . . sad.


To conclude the semester, Sean and I are going to have a wedding party/good-bye party in late June. We are meeting with "Candy" our supervisor's assistant to talk about banquet options, number of guests etc. Qin Chen and I are going downtown on Sunday to talk to some different tailors who can make me a traditional Chinese wedding dress (qipao). As if planning our Holland wedding and reception isn't enough excitement and work for one year . . .