Winter holiday time

JISHOU, HUNAN — I had meant to post this a few days ago, but my webhost was having serious server issues, so I had to wait.

Exams ended Jan. 11. I had two days free before teaching four middle school students two hours a day for a week. That was basically my only time commitment until the 20th, when it was time for all of us to begin the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holiday.

Most of the students on campus vacated as soon as exams ended. A few stayed to work short-term jobs before heading home, and even fewer are staying here for the entire holiday. So, at least I had some company. I’ve also spent time with friends in town. Most of the time, it’s blessedly quiet, so I can pursue projects that I’ve put off for months.

One was to get better wireless Internet service. China Mobile, my cell service provider, has WiFi service, but it’s spotty in Jishou and on campus. They are reportedly building it out over the next few months, so that I might actually have WiFi available in my classrooms and home by April. I wanted something a little quicker, so I asked a friend to help me get 3G service from China Telecom, China’s version of Ma Bell. (China Mobile only offers 3G service with new phones.)

In a few days, I will leave for Jiangmen, Guangdong, where I will teach in an English camp for 12 days. There is no room Internet access in the hotel we teachers will stay at, and only two terminals in the business center. So, having 3G service would be a big help, both there and here in Jishou.

China Telecom sold me a USB dongle for 398 yuan ($60) and three months’ nationwide 3G service for 300 yuan ($45) — $100 gives me 90 hours a month, a little pricey, but I only intend to keep it until China Mobile’s WiFi buildout. The USB modem (a Huawei EC122) works perfectly on my Lenovo notebook, but getting it to work on the Android tablet I had bought in August was not so easy. That’s the subject of another post.

Since this is only my second time staying on campus during Spring Festival, it took me a day or two to realize that ALL the shops would be closed on the 22nd and 23rd for the New Year holiday. When a couple of my students and I decided to go out to eat, we to walk quite a bit to find a restaurant near the campus that was even open on the 20th. A trip to a downtown restaurant the next day was more successful, but twice as expensive as normal. So, I got the hint and went to the supermarket to buy some provisions.

None of which I have even used yet. Last night, four of us had so much food for dinner that we had leftovers to take home. I reckon I have enough food to last a week, but in fact I’m leaving in three days for Jiangmen. So the leftovers will get eaten first, and the other stuff will keep till I get back.

The weather here has been cold and damp for the last two weeks. Two nights ago, it snowed, but that had melted by the afternoon. The temperature has been hovering around freezing, which means basically only my bedroom is comfortably warm. The living room can be made warm, but the portable heater sucks up so much electricity, I only use it when I am actually in the living room. The temperature in Jiangmen is about 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) warmer than here, so I am really, really looking forward to being warm for two weeks.

As for other happenings so far, I’ve made some new friends, relatives of one of my students: a middle school teacher, her husband (a police officer) and their daughter, a college student in Beijing, and the teacher’s sister and niece, a high school student. I had lunch at their place New Year’s Eve, and then we all went to sing at a KTV (karaoke club). They picked me up at the university in a police car, so now I can joke I was picked up by the police in China!

So, that’s the latest news here. It’s now the Year of the Dragon, the most important animal symbol of China. Important things are supposed to happen in Dragon years, so 2012 should be an interesting year.

Incidentally, the Chinese word for dragon is lóng 龙, which is also a common surname or given name. One famous namesake (and Dragon year baby) was Bruce Lee, whose name in Mandarin is Li XiǎoLóng 李小龙 — “Little Dragon Lee.” Lee would have been 72 this year.

Mean girls

JISHOU, HUNAN — I suppose I should not be surprised that Chinese adolescents can be as catty and mean-spirited as Americans are, but two incidents this week still bug me. I need to vent, so if you want to skip all this drama, go ahead.

To set up incident number 1, I need to explain my oral English examination format. Modeling the Cambridge Business English Certificate exams, I meet two (sometimes three) students at a time for about 20 minutes. I test them on vocabulary and pronunciation, then give them a topic on the spot to talk about between themselves for a few minutes. There is usually time left for me to ask them a few questions to verify listening comprehension and coach them on pronunciation issues.

Students sign up for these sessions in class about two to three weeks in advance. With more than 200 students to evaluate, I’m booked pretty tight.

A couple of days ago, I was scheduled to meet three girls — roommates, as it turns out — who I will call A, B, and C. And B are among my best students in their class; their spoken English is not perfect, but they can chatter away at fairly high speed in English. C is a less motivated student, and much quieter in class. If students had been picking members for softball teams, I suspect she would have been one of the last ones that one team would have reluctantly picked. You know what I mean. I certainly do.

Anyway, C told me that A and B, seeing that their roommate (and supposed “best friend”) was the odd girl out, told her she could join them for the examination.

The hour of destiny arrived and I found only C outside my office waiting. She explained, abashedly, that her “best friend,” A, had called her 20 minutes before the appointment and told her that, since C’s English skills were so poor, A and B didn’t want to share their exam time with her. She should meet with me alone.

Mind you, this poor girl, C, had to explain this to me in English with less than 20 minutes to prepare. She was able to do it lucidly and unambiguously, and even request that I not tell her fair-weather friends that she had shared this information with me. Poor English skills? Uh-uh, girl friend.

OK. They aren’t perfect. She has some pronunciation issues. She confused the word “taxi” with “test,” which had me totally confounded for about five minutes. Why would two girls agree to share a cab with her, then at the last minute tell her to get out? When I realized taxi = test, it made a lot more sense. Well, in a way.

C suffers from a serious lack of self confidence. She swore to me that her pronunciation was poor, yet did as well as, and in one case better than, A or B. Her original college plan, she told me, was to study interior design, but her parents required her to study English on the mistaken assumption that English majors stand a better chance in the crowded Chinese job market than design majors. They clearly don’t hang around with the rich folks who inhabit the big cities here with ginormous flats begging for some original design work.

[Amateur's aside: Interior design in China is, I am sorry to report, boring. I love my friends here dearly, but their homes are stark and cookie-cutter like. I feel like I've been transported back to a 1980s Architectural Digest photoshoot every time I visit someone's new home.]

C told me that she had to obey her parents, though she does not especially love English. Convinced that her skills were atrocious, she was visibly surprised when I told her that, in fact, her pronunciation was not at all poor — I have a few freshmen who are nearly unintelligible — and that with some effort, she could overcome her vocabulary and grammar issues. I also suggested she pick up a sketch pad and some pencils and start drawing in her spare time. The five-week winter holiday starts next week, after all.

As I promised, it didn’t let on to A and B that C had spilled the beans, nor did I point out to any of the three that their internal divisions totally fouled up the rest of my schedule for that afternoon. I’m still debating how to address the schedule fuck-up with the class next term without pinpointing the ABC team as the culprit.

On to incident 2. The night after the ABC caper, I was chatting with my friend, K, on QQ. In the course of our conversation about her employment woes, which I will share later to give you an idea of how Chinese bosses work her, I told her about these girls. K asked me if they were roommates, and when I said they were, replied, “Oh, then it definitely wasn’t about her English. It was some girl thing.”

Then K offered her own experience as a for-instance. Basically, in their senior year, one of her roommates would spread nasty gossip about her when she was out of the room while the girls played cards. When K returned to the dorm, the others would fold up the card game and go about their nightly ablutions, not speaking one word to K. This went on for months, until their graduation.

I have no idea why that one roomie had it out for K. Maybe it was some personality problem — K, dear girl, is rather outspoken — or jealousy about K’s academic prowess. Or something else that I, as a mortal man, will never fathom because I’m male and they aren’t.

It gave me added insight into my friend, and her classmates, whom I have all taught, but it also made me realize that people are people, no matter where they live or how they grew up. I suppose that’s good to know, but in these two cases, very sad.

Wonder Girls: ‘Nobody’

JISHOU, HUNAN — Wonder Girls are a Korean pop group, whose 2008 single, “Nobody,” is a big hit in Korea and in China. I swear everyone here knows the song’s tune and the Chinese/English version’s lyrics.

I like it, too. So for your viewing pleasure, here is the Korean version.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA7fdSkp8ds

There’s an English version, but frankly the lyrics are nearly unintelligible and don’t match up well with the choreography and melody.

Their official website has the same version as the one I’m sharing.

Florida school board member takes state skills test, says test is crap

JISHOU, HUNAN — Here’s a novel idea. A very well educated school board member in Orange County, Florida, took his state’s mandatory assessment test, which tests reading, math, science and writing, and he did very poorly. So, he wonders, how valid are those tests, really?

The board member, Rick Roach, is no dummy. He has two master’s degrees in education and educational psychology, and he’s working on a doctorate. He’s trained 18,000 teachers in 25 states, and served on his school board for four terms.

But his reading score on a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test was 62%, which would have sent him to remediation classes. On the math part, he guessed on all 60 questions, getting only 10 right.

In an email to education critic Marion Brady, Roach wrote:

It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.

Roach went on to note how his life would have much different had he been required to take the FCAT in high school, and done as poorly as he did now.

If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions?

He makes a valid point which should bring up school “reformers” up short, but probably won’t. While reformers bemoan the supposed lack of “teacher accountability,” do they also hold accountable the makers of the tests they buy to measure teacher and student performance? If even one well educated adult fails a test for 10th graders, something is very wrong. Scientifically speaking, if our theory is that standardized tests accurately measure student performance, just one negative result would invalidate the theory. At the very least, Roach’s test results should either call into question his qualifications as an educator or the validity of the FCAT.

Chances are, neither question will be raised. Roach is clearly well qualified. No argument there. But school assessment tests are the latest fad in education “reform” — a form of quality control for a corporate mindset that treats schools like factories, teachers like assembly line workers and students like widgets. Too many politicians, big names in education (Michelle Rhee?) and test makers have invested a lot of time and money to give up their pet assessment exams because one board member flunked an exam.

But Americans need to get off the testing bandwagon long enough to evaluate the tests being used. Students should not be pigeon-holed, nor teachers be punished, on the basis of only fill-in-the-oval examinations. Most colleges in the USA no longer use only the SAT or ACT to make admissions decisions, after all. They use other measures of student quality, too.

China could serve as a model of what not to do. Standardized tests are the be-all, end-all of a person’s education here. The dreaded gaokao — the college entrance exam — is the ultimate hurdle for every high school student here. Graduation is merely icing on the cake. A student’s score on the gaokao determines his or her future for the next four years, and probably beyond. Unlike American colleges, Chinese colleges only consider a student’s gaokao score. If you’re even a few points below the cutoff for the school, tough luck, kid.

It’s draconian, to say the least. And there’s no way out. I’ve had several students here who are bright, well spoken (in Chinese and English), thoughtful and diligent, but their gaokao scores banished them to this third-tier university. Future employers will give preference to graduates of first- and second-tier schools, perhaps disregarding other qualifications, because it’s efficient. With a huge population, bosses have to find some way to whittle down the applicant pool to a halfway manageable level.

The Chinese system invites cheating and fraud, because the gaokao, and the many other required examinations, carry so much baggage. The allegations of fraud in the Washington, DC, testing system while Rhee was superintendent only hint at what could happen in the US if people take the whole testing system too seriously.

I have seen what damage standardized tests can do to Chinese students (including suicide). America doesn’t need to go in the same direction.
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The links above about Roach and Brady take you to The Washington Post. Brady has the original commentary at his own blog, www.marionbrady.com.
The link for the Teflon-coated Michelle Rhee is to a scathing critique of Rhee by Diane Ravitch, a fairly conservative but very thoughtful education expert.

Occupy Wall Street in Chinese eyes

[Cross-posted at the Daily Kos]

JISHOU, HUNAN –Chinese observers seem to draw two opposing conclusions from the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. The more common (state-approved) conclusion is: capitalism is bad, Marxism is good. The more thoughtful conclusion is: if the Chinese government doesn’t deal with widespread corruption, China might see similar protests in the not-too-distant future.

Recently, one of my friends asked me what Chinese reactions to OWS were. So, I’ve spent some time poring over Internet reports and blogs to get a sense how OWS is playing over here. Since my grasp of Mandarin is weak still, and my access to movers and shakers is limited, take my comments here with a grain of salt.

Official Chinese news coverage tends to characterize OWS as a confrontation between the very poor and homeless (the victims of heartless capitalism) and the rich and powerful (heartless capitalist dogs). The Communist Party is using OWS as an object lesson in the superiority of China’s Marxism.

Comments to an article about the clearing out of Zucotti Park in New York City are representative of netizen reactions. Several comments are rabidly anti-American and pro-Chinese, leading other commenters to accuse those writers of being paid pro-government trolls. (The Party reportedly pays people 5 mao, or 0.50 yuan, to post pro-government comments on the Internet.)

The more staid party publication, Global Times, predicts OWS will amount to nothing in the end and China should just wait and see what happens.

The Global Times, a widely read Chinese tabloid published by Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, noted in an editorial that “western countries can withstand street demonstrations better, since their governments are elected”.

“The conflicts may be minor or serious, but it will not bring significant change,” it added. “China needs to stay calm and observe how the street movements in the Western world develop and to make the rights choices for its own good.”

(From The Telegraph, Oct. 17.)

Lost in this state-approved presentation are several salient truths about OWS. It’s not just a poor people’s movement. OWS draws supporters from the middle class, too, including retired police chiefs, Iraqi war vets, housewives, grannies and working stiffs, as well as scruffy looking students. Chinese media ironically play up police roughly dealing with OWS protesters (subtly implying it’s a government crackdown), while obscuring the freedoms of assembly and free speech that permits OWS to be so widespread.

No one in the current government would dare remind anyone here of the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests, which brought out thousands of students and intellectuals to rally for civil rights and resulted in a quick and brutal reaction by the Chinese police and military. Most of my students, in fact, know very little about that episode in Chinese history.

As an example of how the message of OWS has been skewed, we can look at a street protest in Zhengzhou by supporters of OWS. Some of them included cadres (important workers who are party members) who seemed to believe that OWS was a rally in support of Marxist ideals and against capitalism. Perhaps the protest was Party-sponsored.

Earlier this year, when the Jasmine Revolution was underway in North Africa and the Middle East, the government here quickly acted to foil any similar movements in China. The usual suspects (likely organizers) were rounded up and detained for several months, the Internet was “harmonized” — scrubbed of any rallying cries for a Jasmine Revolution in China — and official media portrayed the successful Arab Spring people’s movements, as yet more evidence for the superiority of the Chinese Way.

Ironies of ironies, you may be thinking, since China was after all founded as a people’s republic after a people’s revolution against a repressive government. That was before all those “peasants” ended up in power themselves, of course.

It’s that bitter irony that other Chinese recognize. The Party and its economic policies of the last 30 years have enabled China to become a major player in the world’s economy and allowed enterprising Chinese citizens to become rich beyond Mao’s imagination. Meanwhile, freedom of expression is tightly controlled, the Internet and media are closely monitored and censored (I had to use a network proxy to search for “Jasmine Revolution,” in fact), and government officials and business magnates help each other become fat cats.

To help grow the economy quickly, the State has given favored businesses considerable freedom to operate as they see fit (another irony, laissez-faire economic policy), sometimes at the expense of the common citizen, whose protests, when allowed, are ultimately pointless. We hear reports of entire city neighborhoods being evicted and razed for a new construction project, of a miner’s widow being denied access to her husband’s remains and being forced to accept a cash payment as compensation for his death, of bad food resulting from lax regulation, poor construction practices, and environmental disasters.

Many have resulted from the close personal and economic relationships that have developed between government officials, who look the other way, and the favored business leaders, who pay them to look the other way. Having given businessmen an inch, China’s political leaders have seen big business take a mile, and become a troublesome barrier to reform.

This is precisely the same message of OWS, which has not been lost on more thoughtful Chinese observers, who warn that China may yet have its own Occupy movement. As long as China can keep its growing middle class content and comfortable with material wealth, protest movements will gain no traction, however. China has largely been insulated from the economic crises of the USA and EU.

But, if the Chinese economy goes sour and middle class folks lose their jobs, homes and comfy lifestyle, China’s leaders will have an enormous problem that all the ‘Net harmonizing in the world will not solve.

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You might also check out this reports.

Stratfor Analysis

Bloomberg analysis

China’s TV ‘police’ pull plug on commercials during period dramas

JISHOU, HUNAN — China’s TV networks are saturated with historical dramas, with settings ranging from the Tang Dynasty to the Japanese Occupation and the Communist Revolution. They are surprisingly popular among viewers, but, as in the West, the Internet (free movies!) beckons to those tired of the same old same old.

So, China’s version of the FCC has mandated that, beginning Jan. 1, costume dramas will no longer be interrupted by commercials, which are often as dully repetitive as the shows they sponsor. The hope, apparently, is that viewers will sit glued to their sets and not wander away to watch Hong Kong and Korean soapies, Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, or, worse yet, read the news about China from abroad.

The ban on commercials follows another directive a few months ago to eliminate American Idol-like talent contests like Super Girl and Super Boy, which have been much more popular than the state-approved “ain’t we great?” period pieces.

[Speaking of the Super Boy show, one of my juniors was a contestant last year, but was eliminated finally. If you want to check his singing out, here's a link of him learning he advanced to the next round and singing, "Any Man of Mine." Yes, I know, that's my question, too.]

The authorities hope the nation’s networks will provide wholesome entertainment that fosters better understanding of China’s culture and history — all the good parts, of course.

Chinese origins of English phrases

[Cross-posted on my QQ diary page.]

JISHOU, HUNAN — Last week, two of my colleagues and I debated whether the common English greeting, “long time no see,” was Chinglish or English slang. Since I’ve heard it since I was a kid, I contended it was authentically American. They insisted that its origins are Chinese, because there is a phrase in Chinese that is identical word for word. It turns out we are both right.

I checked for the origins of this phrase. One early appearance apparently was in a 1901 book about Native Americans; the white writer had a Native American speaking pidgin English, “long time no see you.” But a more likely origin is from western trade with the Chinese in the late 19th century.

“Long time no see” is the literal translation of the Cantonese 好耐冇見 (hou2 noi6 mou5 gin3) and the Mandarin 好久不见 (Hǎojiǔ bùjiàn). British (and perhaps American) seamen brought the phrase back home, where it eventually became part of the English language. (I also suspect it spread quickly because of early movies, and radio and TV programs featuring Chinese characters, like the Charlie Chan detective dramas, but I have no evidence.)

As it turns out, “long time no see” is not the only Chinese phrase “borrowed” by the English language. Here are some other common ones.

• no can do (不能做 bū néng zuò) — “I can’t do it.” “It’s impossible.” An American pop hit in 1981 was “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” by Hall & Oates. (“I can’t go for that” is an American idiom meaning “I don’t like it” or “I won’t do it.”) Sugababes, a UK girl group, recorded a different pop hit, “No Can Do,” in 2008.
• lose face (丟臉 diū liǎn) — bring shame upon oneself; “I enjoying losing face!” — one of Li Yang‘s Crazy English mottos for English learners.

• no-go (不行 bù xíng)– not OK, option not taken; used by NASA and some military people in the USA, as in a “go/no-go situation”; “The launch was a no-go.” = “It didn’t happen.”

• look-see (看见 kàn jiàn) — look, viewing, observation; “I’ll go have a look-see, and tell you about it.”

• where-to? (哪去 nǎ qù)– “Where are you going?”, “Where do you want me to take you?”; a shorthand way for a taxi driver (especially in New York City) to ask for a destination: “Where to, lady?”

• No this, no that — Not really a Chinese phrase, it is attributed to Chinese-run laundries in the US, who had signs that said “沒票沒襯衣” (méi piào, méi chènyī–No ticket, no shirt) meaning without your receipt, you could not collect your laundered clothing. Now, a common sign in many restaurants all over the US is “No shoes, no shirt, no service.” It means no one coming in without a shirt or shoes would be served food. In fact, they would be asked to leave, for health reasons.

• Chop chop (from 快快 Cantonese faai3faai3/Mandarin kuàikuài — hurry up, go quickly; “Come on, we have to go now — chop chop!” English sailors already used the word “chop” themselves, to mean “quick” or “hurry.” “Choppy seas” means there is a brisk wind and rough waves. They turned 快快 into “chop chop,” to mean the same thing as the Cantonese phrase. When they saw how fast Chinese could eat using two sticks (筷子 kuàizi), instead of spoons or forks, they called the utensils “chop sticks” to mean “quick sticks.” Perhaps they confused the word 筷 with this word 快; in Mandarin anyway, they sound the same, but have different meanings. Nowadays, “chop chop” is not so common a phrase, but everyone knows the word “chopsticks.”

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Since I am cross-posting this on my American blog and my QQ diary, here’s a quick Chinese lesson for my non-Chinese readers.

In Chinese, doubling a word has the same meaning as “very”, “better” or “every”, depending on circumstance. So the Chinese phrase 天天快乐 (tiān tiān kuàile) translated word for word is “day day happy,” meaning “Be happy every day” or “I hope you are happy every day.” (There is that word, kuài 快, again, but combined with 乐 le, it means “happy.”)

Another common Chinese phrase is 好好学习,天天向上 (hǎo hǎo xuéxí, tiān tiān xiàngshàng), attributed to Mao Zedong. In Chinglish, it is “good good study, day day up.” Rendered into more normal English, it means, “Study well, and make progress every day.”

“Good good study, day day up” has become a colloquial part of both Chinese and English here. Hunan Satellite TV carries a popular variety show called Day Day Up. There is also a Chinese language self-study site for foreigners, Day Day Up Chinese.

One last thing: Mandarin (and Cantonese) are tonal languages, meaning the tone (pitch) of a word changes its meaning. Mandarin has four tones, Cantonese even more. We can symbolize tones by using numbers after each word, or by using diacritical marks above the vowels. For example, 妈 (mā or ma1 — high steady tone) is “mother,” 麻 (má or ma2 — rising tone) is hemp, 马 (mǎ or ma3 — “scooping tone,” as I call it) is “horse” and 骂 (mà or ma4 — short, falling tone) is “to scold.” As you can guess, this makes learning Chinese especially difficult for foreigners whose native language is non-tonal. I wonder whether Swedes can learn Chinese faster than Americans.

Made-in-China chili con carne

JISHOU, HUNAN — One of the things I’ve missed in China is Mexican and Tex-Mex food. So, since I inherited a slow cooker from a former laowai, I’d been planning to make some chili. The other day, I happened to find some dry beans in the supermarket that looked somewhat like pinto beans (see photo).

Well, they look like chili beans

It was all I needed to put my plan into action.

Purists of various stripes may be appalled that I mixed meat with beans, or used beans at all, or that I omitted the spaghetti (a barbarous custom — sorry, Cincinnati chili aficionados), or used a premixed chili powder (Mexene™, from the USA).

To those purists, I say, get a life. Chili is basically a peasant’s meal, made with whatever is handy. The actual ingredients are not so important (except for the aforementioned spaghetti, which I can’t find here anyway). The flavor is.

So, here’s my made-in-China chili recipe. The only “foreign” ingredient is the Mexene™ powder, which if I tried I could probably replicate with locally available ingredients.

Chinese slow-cooked chili
Serves 6. Cooking time 6-7 hours.

Ingredients:
1 cup dry speckled red beans
1/2 lb. (300 g) beef, cubed and browned (the package was not labeled, but from the looks, it was shoulder meat; Chinese beef is also very lean — no visible fat on this cut at all)
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 large purple onion, diced and fried
2 -3 red Anaheim peppers, chopped (these are widely available in Hunan)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped (you can omit if you can’t stand cilantro’s smell or flavor)
2 Tbsp Mexene chili powder (I used one Tbsp each of hot and regular mix)
1 tsp salt, or to taste (I tend to under-salt my cooking)
1-2 Tbsp oil (I used peanut oil because of its high smoking point)

Procedure:
The night before –
Rinse the beans thoroughly. Place in slow cooker and cover with 3 cups hot water (for me, that means hot water from my drinking water dispenser, NOT from the tap!). Do not turn on the cooker. Cover and let them soak overnight.

The next morning –
Check water level and add more hot water to cover the beans. Turn on the cooker and set to high. While the beans cook, assemble and prepare the ingredients.

Add tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cilantro, salt and chili powder to the beans.

Get the wok good and hot. Add oil to wok. When it’s also good and hot, stir fry the chopped onion until it just begins to caramelize. Remove and add to cooker. In the same oil, briefly brown the cubed beef. Add more oil if necessary. Add beef to cooker.

Check the water level. Cover and turn heat to low, and cook until beans are al dente (about six hours for mine).

I had a little bit of red wine left over, so I marinated the beef in it while I prepared the veggies. I don’t know if it was a critical step, but the finished product was very good. Two of my Chinese friends enjoyed the chili, and one even had three helpings. I froze some to take next week to the old campus for the teachers there to try. We have a potluck lunch every Wednesday, and so far they’ve done all the cooking.

I served the chili on top of rice, which works out just fine. I plan to try making cornbread when I have some time to experiment. The cornmeal I bought is coarsely ground and needs soaking in boiling hot water before I make it into cornbread. The cornmeal pancakes I made with it were a little too crunchy-chewy for my tastes.

Released from detention, Ai WeiWei still fights authority

Ai WeiWei shows media his $2.4 million tax bill

JISHOU, HUNAN — Despite a lengthy detention, a crushing tax bill and continued harassment by Chinese authorities, dissident artist Ai WeiWei remains undaunted.

Ai was arrested in April for “economic crimes” and held in an undisclosed location for more than two months. Authorities claim Ai owes $2.4 million in back taxes, an accusation he disputes but is paying with the help of his fans. Now, he says one of his associates is being investigated on child pornography charges. Technically, Ai and his wife are under house arrest; he cannot leave Beijing, cannot write anything critical of the government and cannot talk to the media.

But he did anyway. Newsweek magazine carries an essay by Ai in which he describes Beijing as a “prison,” without referring specifically to his own quasi-imprisonment. We know what he means, though.

Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper.

Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses. Each year they build a Beijing equal to the size of the city in 1949. They are Beijing’s slaves. They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts—and the restaurants and karaoke parlors and saunas are very rich as a result.

Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.

It’s a bleak description of the reality that lies underneath Beijing’s many tourist attractions and showy attempts to be a world-class city. In fact, he expresses the kinds of thoughts (“open secrets”– 公开的秘密) that dwell in many Chinese citizens’ minds, but are rarely expressed to anyone but trusted friends and family. Although the horrors of the Cultural Revolution are long past, most people here choose to avoid any “imperial entanglements,” as it were.

Ai has a quixotic belief that the government should uphold the national constitution, which guarantees — in theory — that all citizens have civil rights. Despite the huge gap between theory and practice, Ai continues to fight authority. It’s hard to say if he do any better than the guy in the John Mellencamp song.

Video of Jishou University: Mission part 1

JISHOU, HUNAN — I find it amusing that this video is available on YouTube, which is not accessible from China. Parts 2 and 3 are also available at this link.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPtNXf4WIwM

The video opens with scenes of the campus, including the main academic building, a computer room and exterior shots of the library. Here’s a rundown of what comes next.

About 2:00: Whitewater boating on the MengDong River, Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Qianzhou ancient city
3:45: More scenes of Qianzhou, which is immediately south of Jishou
4:00-about 6:00: artist Huang YongYu, a native of FengHuang, a city about an hour from here. The university has a museum devoted to Huang’s works.
6:00: a steam locomotive (long retired) passing through the hills
6:15: scenes of rural life in XiangXi (western Hunan) prefecture, of which Jishou is the seat
7:00: Jishou and its history, the early university circa 1958
7:36: the original university building, now the home of the medical college at the old campus
7:50: construction of the new campus
9:00: one of the language labs (the instructor is Miss Liu, now director of the Public English Education department)
9:56: a shot of FengYu Lake, with the music building designed by Huang YongYu in the background; my college building is to the left, but not visible in this view
10:28: scenes of an Oral English class, led by a foreign teacher who predates me