Status-quo Vitalis

Sweat drooled down my temples. Sweat gathered on my eyelids and stung my eyes. My arms shone with it and my once clean, sweet-smelling shirt stuck to my body, a somewhat darker color than it had been but two hours ago on its hanger. I smelled like a salt factory. How could I possibly land a job in such condition? It wasn’t that I was the only person so aggrieved; I wasn’t. But I perspire profusely. Around me, along the street, old men and women sat before their houses and stores fanning themselves–or their grandchildren. Slowly, methodically in order not to do it wrong–all the time they talked and laughed.

There was, too, the occasional group of younger men playing cards. Over lunch, I knew from experience, they would add a little drink to the gossipping and gaming. Although it was their wives who were working, these men were traditionalist and would, of course, not be involved in the housework. Homework, some called it. I wondered that they did not become overheated from the intense involvement in their game; though, from the rounded shape of the cards, perhaps only the palms of their hands sweated. Voices grew loud with enthusiasm or frustration. Cards were slapped or flung down on their low table. The occasional strolling grandfather, woven bamboo fan slowly moving the thick air in a kind of thoughtless breeze, would stop and watch the play and then continue ambling down the street.
Indeed, what was the use of doing anything strenuous in such weather? Three yuan for a shower every day mounted up. For a family of three, that would eat up roughly 270 RMB of the household income, perhaps 90% of the wife’s pay. Worst case scenario: showering every day. So, not breaking a sweat was socially necessary.

“So, you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m going.”

“You shouldn’t work so hard in this weather.”

“You’re playing cards.”

“Not so lazy as sitting in your air conditioned house.”

“As if I don’t.”

“We can’t play cards in your house.”

“Fussy old woman, aren’t I?”

A small hand sought mine.

“Where are you going, uncle?”

“What makes you think I’m going somewhere?”

“Where ya goin’?”

“I’m going for a job.”

“Is it a good job?”

“I hope so.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve never worked here before.”

“Do you always do things you haven’t done before, uncle?”

“I’ve done this kind of work before. Just not with these people.”

“What kinda work?”

“Ghost writing.”

“Is that good work?”

“If you can find it.”

“Wow! Hey, grandpa! Uncle’s gonna get a job!”

“That’s great!” shouted his grandfather. “Now, you leave him alone to get on with it.”

“Are you really gonna git a job?”

“Yes. I have a letter here.”

“He’s got a letter, grandpa!”

“Will you leave the man alone? He’s got business to do.”
And so I would become the day’s topic of discussion after I was gone. I smiled ruefully. Amazing how much mileage could be gotten off the most mundane activity when there was nothing else to do.

Though not so well off, I was better off than these people. I lived in this area, still, and knew some of them. I nodded and smiled and voiced the accepted greeting. Smiles and joking. But, after all, I had a little money. More than these my neighbors. So wasn’t I one of the greedy horde going out in search of employment when necessity wouldn’t be demanding as Mother Hubbard’s dog for three or four moths? The truth of the matter was that I wanted a little bit more of a comfort margin. People liked to visit, sitting and talking in comfortable chairs in my cool rooms with their wall of windows (my balcony was enclosed unlike most of theirs) and drinking my tea and water. I did not mind. Loneliness is something I do not handle well. And, of course, why should I be miserly with my comfort? Jealously guarded riches are a source of fear and trembling, as if sharing would somehow contaminate the lucre. Of course, the occasional young thief–usually of frivolities or little luxuries like music or my collectables, an occasional book–these people, discovered more by circumstance than red-handed, found themselves uninvited by my always being busy whenever they called.

Well, I was lucky. True, I had opportunities that these people for the most part did not; but on the whole I struggled. I survived times of only one meal a day provided by friends and houses with no bathrooms–even homelessness–on the way to obtaining the great mythical panacea of an Education. And what did I have? A small nest egg that was fast becoming a hole in the bucket, a few creature comforts and no job. It’s not as if I hadn’t had or didn’t want; it’s more like. . .things happened that conspired–I like to think–to put the kibosh to whatever I was doing. Not a few of my educated friends said I just didn’t know how to play the game. Why would I want to compromise my beliefs in order to get ahead? I knew the rules. I just didn’t want to play by these rules. As I found having a job with a clearly defined objective yet being encouraged to undermine my own dedicated efforts to be hypocritical, I often found myself in contentious situations. You know, I was expected to do my job but not too well. Job security: if you’re too good, too efficient, too successful you’ll find you’ve worked yourself into being dispensable. Unnecessary. I arrogantly considered myself above such behavior. That is, I was a social failure. Pariah, perhaps, is more like it.

Well, not everyone can be a hero, right?

So it was that I found myself walking down the street and out into the mass of human traffic seeking another means of keeping me out of trouble and more assiduously involved in the market economy that kept society going. That is, I would be able to buy more artwork with which to brighten my white walls and more books with which to waste my time. It was not true, however, that I was going about my job-seeking in an arbitrary manner. I had been doing that for months from home, so that now I had an invitation in my pocket, as it were. To truly have had it in my pocket would have meant presenting a soggy piece of paper to the woman at the front desk. A sure means of keeping my unemployed status intact. As this was my entry ticket into a somewhat exclusive world, I had it safely stored in my little bag–a clutch purse we might have called it 50-60 years ago–along with other papers that might serve to keep me inside the door for a time. It was, after all, air conditioned in there.

At the end of the street, sitting on the wall outside her house, sat L–.

“So, you’re going for a job?” she greeted me.

“Yes. I have a letter of invitation here.”

“You are lucky, K–.”

I sat down on the mat next to her. She began fanning me.

“It took me two months to get this.”

“Ah! The postman.” I nodded. “Some of these men should be so diligent.”

“Perhaps they’re not so lazy as–”

“Look at them! Wasting time. They should be out working.”

“You know, jobs are hard to find–”

“K–, wake up to reality. They’re lazy. Look at you–ten years older and you’re out pounding the pavement.”

“Oh. If I pay attention to reality, I complain a lot. How are things with you?”

“I hope you get the job, K—.”

“I have the letter.”

“Well. . .you just be careful they honor it. You know how they can be.”

I waved good-bye and she moved her air conditioning back to herself.

“Ah. Yes. You’re expected, Mr. K–. Through those doors and to your left. The elevator to the thirteenth floor,” was my greeting upon entering the building.

Mister? I had a title. I wanted it used! I had worked hard for the status it carried and I wanted all due respect. A tad elitist, perhaps, and only unwarranted because of my unemployed condition–which she didn’t know about. She did know my title, plainly printed in the salutation of the letter: Dr. K–. She knew my name so she did know how to read. How inattentive of her! No possibility of ever being more than a front desk clerk for her. Odd, isn’t it? How behavior works to limit your future. Keeps you in your place. Like a neurotic rat that keeps running after the goal when the pay-off’s not there any more. So it is that behavior marks the man–or woman. Well, fashions change and no-title referents were the equitable rage. Still, I bristled. . .and did what I was told.

“The thirteenth floor?”

“Yes, sir. We’re not superstitious here,” she replied with offhand snottiness. How outré of me to think otherwise in this modern day and age.

“And that is a very nice ankh you have there. Steel?”

She put her clean, well-manicured fingers over the pendant, rubbing it tenderly. “I’ve had this since I was three. I never take it off.”

“I see. Thirteenth floor?” I confirmed.

“Yes.”

Imagine! A good luck charm and a thirteenth floor.

The elevator doors opened to the Human Resources Department. Mostly, the floor was filled with file cabinets. There were, though, a few people about, including a woman sitting at a desk behind a sign that read “Information.” She was watching me. The only unfamiliar thing in the room. On the floor.

I walked up to her and, greeting her, handed over my letter. She read it. She read it all. Occasionally she looked up at me. I tried to look unconcerned.

When she was through reading every word, she picked up the over-sized telephone and dialed three numbers.

“There’s a Dr. K– here. Supposedly with a letter you sent.” She paused, “Alright.” She hung up the phone. “It’s the big office there, in the corner.” She handed me back my letter and I ceased to exist.

“Thank you.” And then I was on my way.

He was waiting for me at the door to his office, standing in a pool of light from the windows behind him. This glow of lucency was the only way I found his office, glaring as it did off the ceiling and latex-painted file cabinets. Shortly after I’d been cut loose in the maze of files, his door opened, as if to say, “I’m over here!” So it was I found his office, actually tastefully arranged partitions, some with Plexiglas uppers. A desk, two chairs other than his own and two file cabinets were the only furniture. The two framed pictures had most likely been picked up for a song at the local wholesale furniture mart. Anything real would have been too heavy for the walls to hold up.

Ahh! Dr. K–! Dr. K–! You’re here. Hello. How are you? I’m Mr. T–W–.” He stuck out his cool, dry hand. When I put my rather clammy one into his, he covered it with his other pink hand. Although pleasant enough and filled with good intention, I was a captive. He beckoned me into his office, gesticulating for me to sit in the nearest chair. I sat in the other. He shut the door, shaking the walls, and took up his seat behind his desk, spreading his hands on the immaculate desktop.

“You have come. We are so glad.”

“I am pleased as well. It has taken me a long time to get here.”
“Yes. Yes. Now. Let’s see. . .” And Mr. W– opened up a side drawer that, by the sound of it, was empty and took out a folder. When he shut the drawer, with finality, I could tell by its hollowness that it was, indeed, empty. He set the file–my file obviously –on is equally empty desktop and opened it. “You have marvellous credentials, Dr. K–. Very impressive. We are pleased to welcome you to KS Enterprises.”

“Thank you,” I said, wishing to escape praise that was frankly embarrassing. I knew, when compared to others, I had not accomplished much. I published, it was true, but not a plethora of articles. My creative work was considered, by these types of people, inferior. Possibly because they could not do it. I had been to too many places, all for short periods of time. A sure sign that there was something wrong with me, like the people on Internet dating services: if they were so wonderful, why were they there? It is a truism, however quaint and clichéd, that the good ones have already been gotten.

I did, however, suffer from a most grievous malady: I could not tolerate irresponsible behavior or incompetence. These characteristics were so easy to come by (and spot), I tended to be quite vociferous about such people and had, as a consequence, acquired the reputation of complaining. And of being arrogant and demanding. My fault, it was, for I was the only one to complain–only partly true, for others complained amongst themselves and to me but never, never to the people who needed to know.

For instance, I was livid at G–S– at my last post. Never had I encountered such mindlessness and inadequacy. He could not address letters, forgetting recipients’ names. On the train, he did not know the way to his own home; that is, he routinely rode by his station, maintaining that he knew by the look of things where he was. But the big man liked G–S–, rewarding him for a job well done by using influence to get him into graduate school at a good university. He was to study English, though he could speak only torturously.

How could you not complain! Though the rationalization that nothing will happen anyway always springs to the coweds’ lips, the logic is, of course, infallible: it proves itself when, having done nothing, nothing improves. As it was with the youth of U– in the middle of the last century who decided not to have children: who wants to bring children into this world?

Alas–I complain and I bring children into this world.

Incompetence comes in many colors.

Certain kinds of people, when given even a modicum of authority, like to wield said perceived power status in most heinous and self-aggrandizing ways. I suppose one cannot blame them, the world to them is such a hopeless, impotent thing; but I do. And I tend, in my conceit, to not accord them the respect they feel comes with their position; that is, you will do as I tell you! Put another way, that might be, don’t defy me! “Can’t” is not a word found in my vocabulary–except perhaps as relates to certain biological limitations.

As I was thus engaged in revisiting my error-driven ways, Mr. W– continued thumbing through my CV, carefully turning each dog-eared corner. Six one-sided pages.

“Yes, yes,” he said, coming to the last page and returning them all to the face up position. “Very impressive. We are happy to offer you a position with us. Very handsome package, if I may say so. Now!” He snapped the file that contained but a brief yet important part of my life shut and looked directly into my calm, pre-occupied face. “There is a matter of formalities to be gotten through. Nothing difficult. Nothing unpleasant.” He opened up the central drawer of his desk and deftly took out one sheet of paper. He set it on his desk and turned it around and pushed it across the policed wood. “Here is a list of our requirements. I’ll go over them with you.” He pointed with a very sharp pencil. “We need a health certificate. We like our employees healthy. Copies of your identification papers and your work permit. And we need a reference from your last employer.”

“That was three years ago.”

“Nevertheless. It is necessary. A necessary formality. I am sure you understand our position, hmm?”

“All but the reference letter are possible. I have them here.” I took out the necessary papers.

He took them and laid them aside. “We must have a complete file, Dr. K–.”

“Let me see if I can make this clear.” Mr. W– continued, leaning across the desk, pointing his sharp, sharp pencil and smiling timidly. “At my last place of employment, I bucked authority and prevailed. This authority figure is the one who would write the referral. A year later, when I revisited the city to see friends, he threatened my friends. He could do this because he employed my friends. To remove the threat to my friends’ livelihoods, I left the city. Now. What kind of referral do you think this man is going to give me–if indeed he even bothers to write one?”

Mr. W– came to life and sat back in his chair. “Referrals are important, Dr. K–. Without them, who knows what type of salacious or downright bad character we might hire?”

“Mr. W–. . .this man will write reprehensible things about me.”

“Are you listening to me, Dr. K–? We must have a letter of referral from your last employer or we cannot finalize your hiring. It is a part of the application approval process. We all have rules we must abide by, else this would be an unruly place. I have my guidelines. They are in the HR procedures manual. These guidelines assure a smooth-running and efficient business. They are in place to assure the continued high quality of the business. Tried and true. If I break them and if everybody breaks the rules–hard and fast rules–there would be chaos. Arbitrarity. Surely, as a man of intelligence, you see that?”

“Did you follow my story, Mr. W–?”

“What were you trying to say, Dr. K–?”

“The man who would write the referral does not like me.”

“Yes?”

“So, he will not write a positive review of my time there.”

“Yes?

“It will be a negative referral.”

“Do you actually believe employers like nothing about their employees? How very petty of them. And how very petty of you to think so, Dr. K–.”

“May I tell you another story?”

“As it turns out, I’m not pressed today.”

“A certain employer, having a dislike of one of his employees, sought out a means of ridding himself of her. It so happened that this employee was going away for three months for further training. While she was gone, this employer concocted a story and bought evidence to prove it, that this employee had cheated the company. She had paid someone to take a proficiency test for her. This employer pressured the Board of Directors and she, the employee, was fired on the spot. When she returned from her training, she had no job.”

“Yes?”

“I know this woman and–”

“Personal bias, Dr. K–. She must have done something wrong. Going to the Board of Directors was just a formality. Like your referral letter.”

“I see.”

“Well, then! There is no problem, is there?”

“There is the problem of personal bias, Mr. W–.”

“Easy to ascertain. As you see I did with your story. Thank goodness it was a story! How incredible it would be if such people truly existed. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“But it is a true story.”

“Well, well. But it doesn’t concern us here, does it, Dr. K–? You’re not that female employee.”

“She never got another job.”

“That is quite understandable.”

“She couldn’t get a positive referral.”

“Of course not.”

“My past employer does not like me. He will write a negative referral.”

“If we get a negative letter of referral, there will be no way for us to hire you. We can’t have disreputable sorts working at KS Enterprises.”

“Well, then,” I stood up and reached for the file on Mr. W–’s desk. “You won’t be needing this.” And I took the file, turned and strode to the door.

“Where are you going with that, Dr. K–?

“Home.”

“But that’s the property of KS Enterprises.”

“Here, then,” and I returned the manila file. “But I’ll just take what belongs to me. I wrote them. I will take them with me. Thank you. It’s been nice knowing you.”

“But, Dr. K–!” Mr. W– shouted after me. “I can’t hire you without those documents.”

I do not know whether Mr. W– ever filled his vacant position. In general, there was an inexhaustible supply of human resources; in my specialty, perhaps in the neighborhood of one in a million. However, the question is not one of qualifications but one of satisfying formalities.

So it is that between playing cards and visiting friends, I write stories. That is, I tell lies. For what else is fiction?

When the Stone Man Nods His Head

It was a long journey and I stopped to rest. My legs ached from hanging loosely down from the saddle blanket. My ass from the donkey’s backbone. My lower back from the animal’s steady plodding sway. My hat shaded me but sweat oozed out around the brim and coursed down my face, collecting in my moustache and beard. I halted the donkey and slid off. I shambled to the edge of the road hoping the bow in my legs would straighten up. The dusty air was no better at the side of the road but I perched atop a rock anyway. My donkey lumbered off to graze near-by, content to be free of my lead. I tried to clear the dust from before me. I sneezed. This was not the first time. I decided that resting here, in such tainted air, was not such a good idea. But where was the surcease? I led my reluctant ass back to the roadway, mounted and continued my journey.

Not too much farther along, I came upon another traveller. I stopped. He sat on the side of the road. On a stone. His staff lay at his feet, covered with the detritus of his travels and collecting more. I saw no pack beside him. He was travelling light. He rocked and moaned as if asking pity of the relentless gods. Clutched in one hand, the veins standing out against his dusky skin, was a little pouch. A medicine or herb bag. Perhaps a magic charm lay within, for he occasionally shook it.

“Is that medicine in the bag?”

“Yes. Here. Take it.”

“I don’t need it but it might do you some good. What’s the problem?”

“Nothing can help me. I’ve lost my way and don’t know where I am.”

“Well, then, come along with me. We shall be two.”

“No. I can’t.”

“I don’t understand. We must find you–”

“Where are you going?”

“Down the road. To my destination”

“Where is your destination?”

“At the end of my journey. And yours?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“I see.”

“A sword blade cuts things but eyes do not see themselves.”

“Then what can you tell me?”

“I can tell you why this road is so dusty.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I can.”

I thought about this for a moment. This powdered air was a bit unnatural. There was no wind. As he didn’t seem inclined to continue, I thought I might humor him and dismounted, taking a seat beside him.

“Why is this road so dusty, then?”

“Do you really want to know or are you humoring me?”

“Yes. I have sat beside you.”

“I see that. Are you sure you don’t want this medicine? It’s good medicine. No explanation needed.”

“I have no disease.”

“Well then. . .I’ll begin my story. It isn’t a long story. As stories go.”

“I have plenty of time.”

“Are you some kind of holy man?”

“No. I wouldn’t say so.”

“Ah. . .a wise man!”

“I wouldn’t call myself that.”

“It’s what others think and say about you that makes you what you are.”

“So wise men and fools live together.”

“Yes! That’s it. And they travel down this road. But that’s not where the dust comes from. That is from the digging of Jeppe. You don’t now Jeppe. You’re not from these parts. This dust is because Jeppe became obsessed with digging. So much so that people avoided him. And this road. One day he found a tiny gold nugget beside the road. A little farther on he spied another. Jeppe was a fool. He did not look up to see that there was a rich merchant ahead of him with a hole in his saddlebag. Jeppe ran home to get some digging utensils. His wife caught him. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ ‘I’m digging for gold.’ ‘You put those tools back before I beat some sense into you.’ ‘Oh woman of little faith! What do you think this is?’ He thrust the gold nuggets in her face. She took them from him. As was her wont. She took everything from him lest it slip through his fingers. Jeppe scampered off to his digging.

“Jeppe dug pits all along the roadside. He dug furiously. There was no gold. Never had been. Jeppe, though, could not see that, immersed in his cloud as he was. Once he had dug up one side of the road, he started on the other. The clouds of dust he raised became thicker. So thick he could not see where he was going. Or what he was doing. Travellers began taking other roads than this to avoid the dust and discomfort. The way was longer but what could they do? They raised the prices on their goods to make up for lost time. Around town, it began to be asked, ‘When will the fellow who plays with dirt ever be done?’

“Well, one day Jeppe struck his gold. ‘Eureka!’ he cried. ‘I’ve done it!’ By this time he had dug himself out near the lake. You’ll see the place a little farther on. There’s a marker there. He had covered that lake with dust. The townsmen said that at night the frogs could be heard coughing and choking in Jeppe’s dust. People couldn’t eat fish any more. They died from lack of oxygen.

“Jeppe saw his little vein of gold and shouted. Thinking one more thrust would unearth more gold, he jabbed at the sparkling metal. His shovel clanged. Sparks flew. Dust and debris were tossed up around him. Jeppe screamed, grabbing at his face. He twisted and shouted and writhed about until he fell into the lake and drowned. Jeppe hit gold alright. And then he blinded himself with a shard of the precious metal.”

The man became silent. He still rocked back and forth. He still held the bag of medicine out and up, an offering. I waited for more but as no more seemed to be forthcoming, I spoke up.

“So that’s why this road is so dusty?”

“It is.”

“That’s very interesting.”

“You must take the medicine.”

“I have no need of it.”

“You will. It is medicine. It will cure you. If you go along this road.”

“Let me tell you a story.”

“Eh? You have a story?”

“Yes. I’ve travelled a bit.”

“Ah. Have you? Well, then. I’ll hear your story.”

“In a far off land there was a doctor. He was a very good doctor. People liked him. One day a strange epidemic came into his town. It crippled children and killed adults. It threatened to sweep through the district, leaving a decimated ruin of a world behind. Luckily, however, this good doctor stumbled onto a cure for the disease. Instantly he became famous. For the epidemic was not just in his district. It was throughout the land.

“As the ravaging disease was taken under control, more and more uses were found for his medicine. His fame grew as did the stories about him. But his practice at home suffered. He fell under the spell of Super Doc. His diagnosing became superficial, always ending with a treatment of his curative. There were deaths and defections. This doctor had stopped paying attention to people.
“This went on for some time until he had lost all his old patients. He then turned to treating out-of-towners who wanted a personal infusion of his magical curative. The doctor, coming to believe that it could cure anything, was more than happy to oblige. Until he gave his medicine to a young girl who promptly died. When questioned about this, it was found that the doctor had not diagnosed the girl but simply given her the miracle cure as a matter of course. The girl was his daughter.”

“So. . .you will take this medicine?”

“I’m not sick.”

“You will be when you get to the other side of this dust.”

“Hmm. . .since you are staying here in the middle of this dirty fog, I should think you will need it more than me.”

With that, I gathered up the halter rope of my donkey and set out on my journey again. The man had been right. The dust did get worse. But once past the lake, the air suddenly cleared. I took a deep breath. I felt this was the first I had breathed in weeks. I sat down to rest and clear my lungs. I sat back and looked at the clouds and thought about the meaning of life.
Interesting that there were as many meanings to life as there were people. Everyone was ready to fight for the preeminence of his meaning. How silly this was. There is a saying, all voices are the master’s voice, all forms are the master’s form. Still, there are those that think one voice is many voices. If it’s all one, why does anyone fight over it? Why does anyone try to change others’ minds? There is no miracle cure for life.

I took a deep breath and rose. I could not stay here forever, lost in the ramblings of an aging man. A common man on a journey of no particular importance. I gathered up my donkey’s lead and led him down the road into the sunset, happy to walk at a time like this.

Steven Pinker’s Linguistic Sounding Brass and Tinkling Cymbal

Jonathan Swift showed just how silly an “enlightened” stance can be in Gulliver’s visit to the land of the Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms, huge horses full of alot of horse sense, spoke beautifully and convincingly of themselves and their brilliance and intellectual superiority; but they, in their reason and rationality, enslaved Yahoos. These superior beings also believed that Gulliver could not have come from some island across the ocean because they believed, rationally and reasonably, that such an island did not exist and, therefore, it did not. Despite having no experience upon which to make such a judgment. Yet, experience is a state of consciousness. Karl Popper maintains, in Unended Quest (p. 218), that “it is silly or at least high-handed to deny the existence of mental experiences or mental states or states of consciousness; or to deny that mental states are as rule closely related to states of the body, especially physiological states.” Which would seem to confirm the Houyhnhnms in their intellectual behavior for, after all, they are basing their judgment on the experience of themselves and their superior knowledge and intellectual ability. They never met any others their superiors.
So, it stands to reason, that they believe as they believe.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. And other novels of absurdity. Novels of people with individual mental states of consciousness.

On and off throughout history, science has had a bad name because of such thinkers, men (in most cases) who have a particular mental experience. More often than not via the same lingual pyrotechnics as Jonathan Swift used to elucidate such foolishness. With this in mind, it would be good if critical appraisers could be a tad more discriminating in their choice of scientists to congratulate and hold up as shining examples of their art discipline. Steven Pinker is considered to be such an enlightened one by popular publishers and science journalists. Steven Pinker is considered the leading figure in language and linguistics studies in the US, especially via neurological investigations. Dr. Pinker is a psychologist, which of course means he knows better via an understanding of the deeper reaches of motivation to behavior. And Dr. Pinker is a Houyhnhnm thinker, a man who runs in the face of David Hackett Fischer’s Historian’s Fallacies and Stephen Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument and any of Karl Popper’s assumption-questioning writings–even though he cites Popper in The Stuff of Thought–because he hasn’t the experience of them. A few examples will, I think, suffice to elucidate the priceless thinking and intellectual cerebration science writers hail as Dr. Pinker ’s ground-breaking theories.

To begin at the end, as Edgar Alan Poe suggests writers do:
“[N]ear death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain” (The Mystery of Consciousness). This presupposes that there is a separation of the body and the soul. But it is just a tautological dismissal that, in reality, proves nothing because death/near-death is a time of low oxygen in the brain. This happens when people smoke and drink, too, but they report no similar experience. Occasionally, those who ingest LSD or magic mushrooms relate such experiences, without oxygen starvation. Dr. Pinker is saying is that these people did not experience what they experienced. There is no scientific evidence to verify this dismissive judgment, yet it cannot be dismissed as it comes from Dr. Pinker’s Houyhnhnm thinking, as supported by Dr. Popper. It is, then, of no import that such a statement as his is an opinion of science; for, as a Houyhnhnm there is no reason not accept his say so.
Indeed, he’s from Harvard, a university that consistently produces the superiorest of the superior. Dr. Pinker engages in characteristic Houyhnhnm tautological perseveration to prove his point that alternative states of consciousness are not real. He believes they can be explained by some kind of physical state: they are the result of oxygen deprivation to the brain because, well, oxygen deprivation is part of the experience. Like smoking or drinking. This is Houyhnhnm science.

Earlier in the same essay, published in Time (19 Jan. 2007), Dr. Pinker states, “Consciousness surely does not depend on language.” How unfortunate that, in fact, it does depend on language, for without language no one would know of anyone’s consciousness, no one would be able to admit of it, nor would one be able to talk about one’s own consciousness of one’s self, outside of consciousness of the world around one. We are languaging animals: our world is described and built and adapted by our language (Cf. Humberto Maturana generally). Without talking about it (expressing it), how is one to communicate that one is conscious? And, indeed, which state of consciousness one is in, for there is more than one consciousness. Well, perhaps being an experience and experience, as we’ve already noted, is a Houyhnhnm characteristic, it is not out of order that Dr. Pinker, can maintain that it doesn’t exist just because someone says so.
Yet, in this essay (The Mystery of Consciousness), Dr. Pinker makes the most amazing and contradictory statement: there is a seat of consciousness and it is in the “higher” part of the brain. He supports himself by citing Crick, the other half of the DNA discoverer duo. However, earlier on, he maintains that consciousness consists “of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain.” He even notes that Bernard Baars “likens consciousness to a global blackboard.” Perhaps it is premature and somewhat arrogant to ask: Which is it Dr. Pinker? Is there a seat of consciousness, like the seat of language in Wernicke’s or Broca’s areas? Or is it a brain-wide phenomenon? But let’s not talk about that.

Let’s talk, rather about how consciousness can be only “neural computation” while conveniently excluding soft matter physics. If consciousness is a physical seat in the grey matter of the brain, it stands to reason, I think, that there may be external stressors that affect a cell’s functioning on the cellular level as well as the macroscopic level: swelling in the brain effects behavioral aberrations which, I think, have something to do with “neural computation.” If a change happens on such a large scale, a change must have happened on the cellular level since the cells themselves are not static entities–or perhaps there is some other reason for the brain to pulsate. That is, the environment in which nerve cells operate affects their operation and this tee-tiny alteration creates, in the aggregate as cells do not operate in isolation from other cells, a greatly enhanced alteration in the behavior these cells cause to happen, as an expression of themselves. Even the pulsation affects, macro- and microscopically, of “neural computation” of the cells in the body react to contiguous and non-contiguous cells’ “neural computation.” Dr. Pinker’s thinking seems to be quite linear and rather simplistic and very, very concrete and does. Indeed, his thesis that you cannot talk about consciousness because he can’t talk about it. Dr. Pinker is a genius Houyhnhnm.

His dismissive Houyhnhnm attitude runs throughout his writing, that is, “I don’t believe it, so it’s all pish-posh.” At the same time, Dr. Pinker is attempting, via classical science (physics), to explicate consciousness/perception/emotion when in fact classical science divides the world into two–body and spirit–and cannot explain what happens in the mind via the physical brain because the mind is not a physical reality. (Show me the mind, Dr. Pinker.) Classical science has trouble seeing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that is, the brain and all that goes to make it up creates something greater than itself. As if to thwart the thinking of the Houyhnhnm, Karl Popper says the mind is the producer of human language, it is “the producer of theories, of critical arguments, and many other things such as mistakes, myths, stories, witticisms, tools, and works of art” (Unended Quest, p. 221). Dr. Pinker could not get his mind around Bertrand Russell’s grandmother’s plague upon him: “What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind!” What Popper seems to be saying is that the mind is what allows Pinker to say and do whatever it is he says and does, albeit this is a decidedly un-Houyhnhnm thing to believe.

Dr. Pinker also says, “everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) remains a mystery.”

Who is “everyone”? (Perhaps a rather un-Houyhnhnm-like query because everyone knows who everyone is.)

The hard problem is “explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation.” That is, consciousness is a mysterious physical anomaly in classical physical bio-chemistry. There is a kind of tyranny of the to biological, to the physical, here in that Dr. Pinker purports to be able to explain the non-physical by the physical, which is, in and of itself, a mystery. Not to mention the apparent opposition to what he’s already said. If consciousness is physical, Dr. Pinker, show me it because I’m only a Yahoo. Simply saying it is so doesn’t make it so, unless one is a Houyhnhnm or a religious leader.

There are some people, notably I.N. Marshal, who do not believe consciousness is a mystery or, rather, that it is a mystery by way of being a problem for which there is an explanation. Marshal, Zohar and others approach consciousness from a quantum mechanical viewpoint. (Dr. Pinker’s flippant speaks to this science later.) Dr. Pinker sees the brain as a computational entity; it doesn’t do anything else but computer neurologically. David Deutsch, on the other hand, believes that to call the brain a computational thing is not only limiting but wrong (Cf. The Fabric of Reality). Truly an anti-Houyhnhnm proposition that seems to point to Dr. Pinker’s confusing brain with mind or, rather, considers there to be no difference: brain is mind and mind is brain (The Stuff of Thought, p. 259). Everything is rational and reasonable and solely to be found in the neural functioning of the physical brain. Everything for Dr. Pinker resides in the physical brain. The brain’s functioning is the answer to everything. The brain rules! The brain also leaves us no choice. We are at its mercy. But it’s a mystery as to how this happens and what this mercy is. Even Pinker admits it’s a mystery when he says we have an innate language instinct. Why? Because instinct is a mystery in and of itself. And so it is that Dr. Pinker is talking in circles. This is Houyhnhnm science.

What happened to environment and heredity in Dr. Pinker’s theories is also a mystery.

Dr. Pinker even talks of language as if it were bits and pieces that are put together according to certain rules–like the brain is bits and pieces put together according to certain rules–implying that to not follow the rules results in non-language and–perhaps I stretch the point here–stupidity. (Where does that leave James Joyce, Antonin Artaud or the Absurdists?) Stupidity is Dr. Pinker’s forte: all his argumentation is reducing ideas he does not agree with, including Lakoff and Johnson’s, to the ridiculous, using bits and pieces of their writings in order to lambaste the entirety of their theories and impart to them ideas or beliefs that are, in reality, his conclusions based on conscious misinterpretation such that the argument to ridicule is itself ridiculous and therefore his ridiculous statements don’t sound so ridiculous, that is, they sound sensible (Cf. The Stuff of Thought in its entirety). Houyhnhnm scientific thinking.

Dr. Pinker never bothers to prove his opinion; corroboration by his own testing is not scientific proof, according to Popper; it is more in the way of a laboratory simulation. Laboratory simulation always produces what you want to prove so it proves nothing, in fact. Except that it is Houyhnhnm science.

Dr. Pinker, in “Words Don’t Mean What They Mean” (another Time Inc. article, of 6 Sept. 2007, an excerpt from The Stuff of Thought), lays lines on his listeners, role plays, sidesteps, shilly-shallies and engages in “all manner of vagueness and innuendo.” We also do as he tells us we do, without apparent thought: assume “that the speaker is rational.” Dr. Pinker’s rationality is of the Houyhnhnm variety. So Dr. Pinker is seen to be eminently intellectually gifted and full of astounding insight, as gullible Gulliver saw the Houyhnhnms.

The most insidious Houyhnhnm argument Pinker makes results in his debunking quantum mechanics. To wit:- “Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.” Well, Einstein thought quantum mechanics was weird, too. It’s of no consequence that Einstein’s been proven wrong on this point. Of course, the logic that uses one extremist to debunk the entirety of a science and Richard Feynman is Houyhnhnm logic. Isn’t it? Gulliver was a maverick.

Dr. Pinker wishes to take the mystery out of language via scientific examination and neural explanation and, to do so, he posits that language is an instinct. . .a very mysterious thing indeed is instinct. Instinct is, I think, something that cannot be explained: it just is. And as it is, it is mysterious in its being. In his infinitely regressive method of analysis, Dr. Pinker ever reaches the point where he can explain nothing and it’s at this point that language becomes instinct (Cf. The Stuff of Thought). So, in truth, Dr. Pinker explains nothing and keeps language in the realm of the mysterious. But it sounds good. Wow! Language is built in. We’re different. The Houyhnhnm cerebration is that if I say it is thus, it is thus. And therefore it’s science.

A fool (Yahoo) might ask, “How?” and show his stupidity in thinking that debunking the mysteriousness of language by attributing it to the mysteriousness of instinct is ridiculous. . .if not mysterious. Even so, Dr. Pinker cannot explain the languaging of deaf people or Koko the gorilla–unless his definition of language is in its speaking; that language is not language unless it’s spoken. Which makes writing not language, maybe?

Again in “Can’t find the words? Make ‘em up,” Dr. Pinker resorts to Houyhnhnm-specious thinking in his Chinese example of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism via the Chinese for light in weight (qīng 轻) and heavy (zhòng 重). However, qīng has many meanings in Chinese, such as light green, clear and innocent. So does zhòng; middle, hit, numerous. In Chinese, mostly, the sound of the word is just the sound, but the pitch changes the meaning. For instance, qīng 青 (light green), qǐng 请 (please), qīng 清 (clear, usually referring to river, stream, lake), qíng 情 (passion). All “qing.” All have the sound “qing,” But their meanings have nothing to do with each other. The implication Pinker is making is that there is a parallel between sound and meaning that holds across the language and therefore all languages (even though he debunks this in The Stuff of Thought). It doesn’t. Especially as Chinese is a tonal language. Dr. Pinker is not aware, apparently, that there are at least nine characters in Chinese with the pronunciation of qīng (first tone); some do not have opposites.

If a Yahoo looks at large (dà 大) and small (xiăo 小) he might find that, yes, da is the strong fourth downward tone but xiao is the sing-song third tone. Not only this but da changes its tone with usage, that is, in context. And what are we to make of inside (nèi 内) and outside (wài 外) or up (shàng 上) and down (xià 下)? These opposites are the same tone. Using Pinker’s Houyhnhnm mind, we can easily take gāoxìng (高兴happy) as, at best, so-so and bēishāng (悲伤sad) as good feeling. This is ridiculous. Gāo 高 (high) and dī 低 (low) are both high tones but, according to Dr. Pinker’s Houyhnhnm theorizing, mean differently, that is, dī cannot be low because its tone is high. What is worse, we can take bái 白 (white) as the same as hēi 黑 (black), that is, as white, because black is dark and the tone is not: if we follow Pinker’s statement, then we confound black and white. It’s a terrible Yahoo argument, of course, for how could a top Houyhnhnm psychologist lead his readers to confuse black and white, right and wrong?

There are only four tones in Chinese (five if you count the neutral tone), so onomatopoeia and sound symbolism via tones is extremely limited and apparently has little to do with sound meaning, according to the Yahoo Chinese who developed their language. Further, all these also challenge “families of words share a teeny snatch of sound and a teeny shred of meaning.” In Chinese, word families share a shape, not necessarily a sound or meaning. For instance, the shape family of kŏu口 (mouth) yields gē哥 (song), dīng叮 (mosquito bite), jiā加 (add), nà呐 (no meaning by itself), xuān喧 (noisy), zào噪 (chirp, as with insects or birds)–just a few of the 300+ kŏu口family characters.

This association of sound with meaning is the kind of thing we used to do as children and laugh about. Dr. Pinker, here, is making a Houyhnhnm-specious argument. He also does not speak or read Chinese–nor does his audience, which is why he can get away with such a Houyhnhnm statement. Further, generalizing from one instance to the entire corpus is intellectually indefensible. Factual errors on the part of an academician and scientist are not acceptable. Though, perhaps, the superior mentation of Houyhnhnms can be forgiven.

Except that in the early part of the 20th century, the onomatopoetic theory of language had already been disproven by linguists and philosophers, though, of course, for many modern doctorate holders, that’s ancient history: it is often the case that, in scholarly writing–especially dissertations–references more than 5-10 years old are verboten. Not only history is lost in this way but knowledge. Yet, Dr. Pinker is a follower of X’s universal grammar theory and that was put forth in the early part of the 20th century. A conundrum, to be sure. Indeed, “the names which occur in human speech cannot be interpreted in any such invariable manner. They are not designed to refer to substantial things, independent entities which exist by themselves. They are determined rather by human interests and human purposes. But these interests are ot fixed and invariable. Nor are the classifications to be found in human speech made at random; they are based on certain constant and recurring elements in our sense experience” (Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man, p. 134). It seems, then, that Dr. Pinker is taking words not only out of context but isolating them as individual units and attempting to build a theory of language from these bits and pieces that have no relationship to each other and no relationship to use or culture. There is no juxtaposition. For Dr. Pinker, words are, well, just words. They don’t appear with other words and they don’t change their meaning in association with other words, of course. Writers, those picayune Muse-inspired applied linguists par excellence, who are never taken into account by linguists as knowing anything at all about language (and therefore never consulted or, heaven forbid, studied), know this to be untrue.
Indeed, for Natalie Goldberg, this is a major aspect of writing: words rub up against each other and change their meaning or connotation (Cf. Wild Mind). And Gendlin’s theories are based on contextual usage (Cf. X). Dr. Pinker seems to be measuring language–and he seems to be confounding la langue with la parole–as if it were a scientific thing, a state of being and this is not possible. He is trying to deduce the characteristics of an electron solely by figuring out where it is and how big it is. It and its action, its behavior when moving in context, are different things. But, then, that’s quantum mechanics and that’s already been displaced into File 13 by Dr. Pinker.

Thus, as the name of an object has little to do with the truth of the object but, rather, emphasizes particular aspects of the object, we come across the many words for “snow” in certain Eskimo languages and “hit” in some Amerindian languages and the various counters in Japanese for different entities: long and thin (x), round (x), flat (x), people (x). Or, if we look at the moon, as Washington Irving did in his History of New York, we find that the Greek word mēn emphasizes its measure of time while the Latin word luna, luc-na refers its brightness. How many “heavies” are there in Chinese?

But even more to the point, Chinese words are made of two characters, for the most part. In fact, in Chinese, a single character does not often have meaning. So, what does he make of bō 玻 and lí 璃, which have no meaning when in isolation but when used together, as in bōlí 玻璃, mean “glass.” There are many similar examples, such as pútáo 葡萄 (grape), yīngsù罂桃 (opium), luòtuó 骆驼 (camel), pángxiè 螃蟹 (crab), to name a few words in which the individual characters (the first ones in this instance) are meaningless by themselves.

This fact also challenges Dr. Pinker’s statement that “long words may be used for things that are big or coarse, staccato words for things that are sharp or quick.” “Staccato” and “ratatatat” are long words–and staccato–yet are for sharp or quick sounds. There is nothing short here, which is the implication in Dr. Pinker’s thesis above. The problem is that almost all Chinese words are short, which means, according to Dr. Pinker, that Chinese cannot talk about big and coarse things. Actually, Chinese can: let’s see. . .zhéxué 哲学 (philosophy) and zhū 猪 (pig)–that’s big; xīnguì 新贵 (parvenu) and cūsù 粗俗 (vulgar)–that’s coarse. Taking into account all these factors, we can safely come to the conclusion that Dr. Pinker’s theory is as right as he thinks because it is appropriate Houyhnhnm thinking.

Dr. Pinker’s definition of onomatopoeia is that it is solely sound-based; but in Japanese there are two major types: giseigo and gitaigo, the latter referring to actions. A third group, of which gotcha-gotcha is a good example, refers to states of being (upset stomach or being mixed up). In Chinese, onomatopoeia is used, mainly, for giving strong impressions, expressing things realistically and representing the rhythms of various activities. Dr. Pinker is a follower of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, yet he cannot uphold this thesis in Chinese or Japanese. But Dr. Pinker is a cutting edge Houyhnhnmist!

Dr. Pinker also notes that most “sn~” words refer to the snout (nose). This kind of assertion plays because: 1) he’s an authority; and 2) no one’s going to actually count all those words. . .except for a second language learner who counted and found 60% of the “sn~” words had nothing to do with the nose. Not a very worthwhile observation, of course, as students are your penultimate Yahoos.

In his Language Acquisition, Dr. Pinker engages in the most egregious Houyhnhnm analysis of how children gain an understanding of how to use language given that they are not open to hearing constant repetitions of patterns: he shows us how they, children, use higher intellectual functioning to come to a conclusion, his conclusion. In truth, children are incapable of even the simplest of arithmetic computations. Not only do children not have this ability to logically analyze backwards from a given until they are much older, Pinker is going about his explanation backwards, as if the end product is the cause when it is more probably the effect of the learning (Cf. Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species, for a different take on this).

Dr. Pinker first slides around issues by using ifs, shoulds, coulds–suppositions that assume much but prove nothing. “[C]hildren should start off assuming that their language requires the largest possible governing category, and then to shrink the possibilities inward as they hear the telltale sentences” resulting in “this subtle pattern of predictions.” But they already don’t hear constant repetition. Children are also supposed to “assume, by default, that languages have a fixed constituent order. They would back off from that prediction if and only if they hear alternative word orders, which indicate that the language does permit constituent order freedom. The alternative is that the child could assume that the default case was constituent order freedom.” Eh? “Constituent order freedom”? What kind of children does he know? Children who can classify at age 2 or 3?

Dr. Pinker is thinking, it seems, that children have the same mental agility as he, an adult Houyhnhnm, and can engage in axiom-making and assumption-getting that go with higher inductive and deductive reasoning. He is having children reason as an adult Houyhnhnm might. This is fallacious reasoning. One that, perhaps, Jonathan Swift perhaps might could have used in Gulliver’s Travels or any of his other satires. Children can’t add one and one, Dr. Pinker. Children can’t tell that 10 cc of liquid in a short, round glass is the same as 10 cc of liquid in a tall, thin glass. Unless, perhaps, of course, there were Houyhnhnm children, little people full of horse sense. Again that ancient philosopher of language, Ernst Cassirer: “If a child when learning to talk had simply to learn a certain vocabulary, if he only had to impress on his mind and memory a great mass of artificial and arbitrary sounds, this would be a purely mechanical process.” But, of course, Dr. Pinker does believe that the brain is only involved in mechanical processing. However,

It would be very laborious and tiresome, and would require too great conscious effort for the child to make without a certain reluctance since what he is expected to do would be entirely disconnected from actual biological needs. The ‘hunger for names’. . .reminds us that we are here confronted with a quite different problem. By learning to name things a child does not simply add a list of artificial signs to his previous knowledge of ready-made empirical objects. He learns rather to form the concepts of those objects, to come to terms with the objective world. . . . And language, taken as a whole, becomes the gateway to a new world. All progress here opens a new perspective and widens and enriches our concrete experience (Essay on Man, p. 132).

So it would seem that learning all of these words is learning an objective world. As Suzanne Langer posits in many of her writings, especially Mind, the brain’s job is to find meaning.
The brain we humans have took millions of years to evolve but the language we use evolved (evolves) in hundreds or thousands of years. So, language cannot be an evolution-dependent item, as Dr. Pinker posits. But it could be, as Dr. Deacon notes, a co-evolutionary item, à la Baldwinian evolution/selection (Cf. The Symbolic Species). But Dr. Terrence Deacon is not among the media’s edge-defying Houyhnhnm scientists. Who knows why. Perhaps because he’s not colorful enough. Or maybe he’s too fond of gorillas, especially gorillas that symbolize (Koko). And gorillas are a lower life form. They are not Houyhnhnms. And–horror upon horror!–Dr. Deacon consults with Koko.

Dr. Pinker does not like Dr. Deacon. Actually, Dr. Pinker doesn’t seem to like anyone who doesn’t think as he does. This becomes obvious in The Stuff of Thought, especially as he cites himself 20 times, twice as often as any other writer/theorist–and Terrence Deacon not at all. His weight in the corpus of linguists around the world is evident via their not citing him at all in their work.
But Steven Pinker is colorful and animated and popular and that’s what’s needed in selling a Houyhnhnm science. As long as it sounds great, it’s good. As long as it’s making fame and fortune for a previously unknown psychologist, it’s cutting edge.
It is of no account that the Yahoos in the Old West called these kinds of people con-men or snake oil salesmen and Medievalists charlatans. They are not, of course, Houyhnhnms and, therefore, jealous in their jibes.
_______________

Bibliography
Brockman, John. Edge. http://www.edge.org/
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944.
Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.
Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality. New York; Penguin Brooks, 1997.
Fischer, David Hackett. Historians’ Fallacies. New York: Harper & Row, Pubs., 1970.
Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind. New York: xx, 200x.
Langer, Suzanne. Mind. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 19xx.
Pinker, Steven. Can’t find the words? Make ‘em up at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article2474562.ece
__________. The Mystery of Consciousness at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html
__________. The Stuff of Thought. London: Allen Lane, 2007.
__________. Words Don’t Mean What They Mean at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1659772,00.html
Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge Classics, 1969.
__________. Unended Quest. London: Routledge Classics, 1994.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. London: xx, 16xx.
Toulman, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
Vonnegut, Kurt. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. New York: xx, 19xx.

*Huang Jia’ning is a tri-lingual interpreter: Chinese-English-Japanese. It is thanks to his input that I was able to discuss the problems with interlanguage onomatopoeia, despite my years in both China and Japan.

Chinese Education: The Plight of the Foreigner

The caveat here is that, for the most part, the foreign contingent from America are without qualifications; they are in China to travel and only teach to make money. They possess a Bachelor’s degree and are native English speakers. That is all the qualification they need to find a job in China, jobs that, because of them, are a dime a dozen and, so, the pay is accordingly low. Albeit that housing is included into the bargain. They give, by their incompetence and uncaring attitude, the rest of the foreigners who really are qualified a bad name.
One of the reasons this situation exists is that incompetency is liked in Chinese universities. It is the going thing amongst the Chinese themselves. Of less satirical nature is the need for warm bodies to fill slots to show the government that the university is really employing foreigners teaching oral English and the ubiquitous and totally meaningless Western culture. Sometimes, they will attempt other courses but their incompetence is usually too glaring even for the Chinese. So, foreigners are seen as teachers of oral English and culture, c’est finis. I was cut out of teaching writing at one college because “a Chinese teacher can teach Chinese how to write better than a foreigner.” Never mind my credentials or my 40 years’ experience or the fact that the college’s student performance was not very good. And never mind that my students score higher on the almighty test or post better written theses or show all-round improvement in their English abilities. A Chinese knows better.
Oral English is a throw-away course since there is no need to speak English well and certainly there are no oral English components to any nationally standardized tests until the frightening, to the student, TEM-8, the final test of English competency for English majors. The national fail rate is 60% on this test. The oral component to the test is a very small percentage of the whole, however.
The method of attacking such a failure rate in many colleges is to do more of the same by teachers who may be able to speak English but teach in Chinese. Beating a dead horse? The students are lectured to. They are told how to write, how to memorize scads of information that can only satisfy test-makers but has, in truth, nothing to do with English competency. There is no vocabulary component to the TEM-8 but they are pushed, pushed, pushed to memorize 10,000 words. Most of the students run around with an ultra-thick pocket-sized book of “10,000 words you need to know for the TEM-8.” No one actually encourages these students to read more.
I did a study of English testing in China and the TEM-8 is the only test I came across that had no mistakes in it. Not only no mistakes in answers but no mistakes in grammar and word usage in the directions. The only one. All of the other tests are defective in both answers and English usage in directions, as if the country wants its students to be incompetent or deficient. The TEM-8 corresponds to an SAT or ACT verbal component. The only time a Chinese major in English can take the test is during the last semester of college. They get two more tries.
Note that passing the TEM-8 is not a requirement for teaching.
I have had good success with my approach to teaching writing, resulting in higher test scores. But it is of no account. I am a writer. But this, too, is of no account. I am an editor. This is not worthy of consideration. I am a foreigner: what am I doing here? And it is by way of this question that foreigners are bashed and held to be incompetent, whether they are or not.
It works this way: if you have a higher degree–that is not TESOL–and you are in China, you are in China because you are incompetent to teach in your own country. This isn’t just an unwritten law or unstated attitude, we will be asked this outright. I was even asked this question by a Canadian private International school! The Chinese do not understand that there might be other reasons, including personal choice, because they are fully aware of how low their educational status is in the world. They’re not, however, into improving themselves, just maintaining the unthreatening status quo. When I tell people, no one understands but they say, anyway, “Oh. I know.” (This actually corresponds to “I see” but the Chinese translate the Chinese我知道wo zhi dao literally, “I know.”)
We’re also tagged as being stupid: stupid foreigner knows nothing about China and Chinese institutions and Chinese bureaucracy and Chinese ways of doing things and Chinese. . . . We are continually condescended to, even to the point of not understanding our own language. More than once, I’ve been instructed in how English works, why I don’t speak it properly and why I can’t understand my Chinese peers. These people never attend my lectures on English language; in one case, one of these kinds of people actually arranged the lecture.
We foreigners are constantly battling this “stupid foreigner” label and the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) personnel deem us to be without resources when they treat us badly or break contract. Indeed, just recently, I received an e-mail from the FAO telling me they would be not fulfilling their end-of-contract monetary obligations. That is, she wrote to tell me she would be breaking contract. The audacity of such behavior is beyond my ken. However, I do know what to do and had already taken steps via another route over this woman’s behavior. I’d had occasion to try this route several years before. It is the legal route. The problem is that many universities have such a reputation within the community that they can pressure the lawyers and nothing happens. The US Embassy’s American Citizens Bureau is useless: when you contact them with these illegalities, they send you a long list of lawyers and tell you this is all they can do. In fact, they are not in the business of protecting or helping American citizens; they are in the business of protecting Embassy personnel.
For this individual FAO secretary, Hu Jia, at Hefei University of Technology, there is another problem that she is not aware of. Even after my troubles with these people over my seven years here, I was not aware of this: it is not legal for her to tell me I’m not going to have my contract renewed via e-mail, she must do it on letterhead paper. I was very pleased to have this information. But now, with her stated intent to not fulfill contractual obligations, my situation is doubly viable. (I am going with a major firm that does an immense amount of international business.)
This particular person, Hu Jia, embodies all of the worst characteristics of the Chinese in relation to the foreigner. She is rude, she is inappropriate, she is condescending, treating us as if we’re stupid beyond belief–and we all avoid her. In truth, she does not do her job: she sits in her office and has her hired graduate student help do it all. They all dislike her, 100% across the board: not one of them likes her or will work for her past the end of their work-study obligation. That she lets her personal dislike color her decision-making is evident in my being at this university. From the day I arrived she has been rude and sought to cause me trouble. Indeed, she decided that not only could I not have, much less understand, contacts in China but that my nice recommendation from a college I’d been with for three years was not acceptable because there was no problem there. In her own words, she was “looking for trouble.” In her bid to discredit me, she let my visa expire. Without resource to her contacts, the university would have been liable for the fine: 400 RMB/day. I’m the one who came up with the argument to get around this problem (that she caused, in the name of finding trouble with me). The grad students who were with me at the Public Security Bureau (PSB, police) relayed the reasoning to her and it was followed. Since then, the needed repairs to my apartment have not been undertaken despite repeated requests: her excuse is that she’s “just an office and can do nothing.” Promises made to me, that enticed me to choose this school, have yet (8 months later) to be kept. Yet I am the one who is rude and uncooperative.
Let us look at this “cooperation” concept a little. Chinese society is known as a society of harmony and cooperation. The foreigner is inveigled with this and told to learn cooperation, for they are dealing with Chinese. That is to say, all adjustment to culture is from the foreign side and none from the Chinese side. Why should they adjust to the foreigner, to any slight degree, as they are Chinese and this is their country. There is no conception that they are dealing with a foreigner and that some knowledge of foreign culture and behavior might be in their favor. No. They are Chinese and this is China and the foreigner is dealing with Chinese. About the only concession is the contract: Chinese get no contract. They are kind of held in thrall and if they are dismissed they are screwed for the rest of their lives. So it goes.
Being culturally sensitive after several years in Japan and China, I am aware of the vagaries of the Chinese way of doing things, though I’m constantly beset by Chinese telling me I know nothing: after all, I’m a stupid foreigner. I am told I must adjust, I must give. No Chinese has any idea how much a foreigner gives in this equation. We must sift through their faulty use of English before we decide to be insulted or not, for half the time they do not know what they are saying when they speak. We must sift through their use of our language in order to make sense of what it is they want or intend before we can appropriately respond. That they are forever not understanding us is not their fault, it is our fault for not adjusting and cooperating with them.
There is a belief that English is an informal language and is not polite, as Chinese is: polite and refined. This is, of course, not at all true. English is an understated language at its best and very polite: an inappropriate level of politeness in a business situation will get you no business association. The Chinese use “want” for just about everything and certainly for every situation where English would use “I would like” or “may I have” or “would it be possible” or other soft and polite phraseology. Everything is want, want, want in Chinese–unless subjective feeling is involved. Or so I’m told, for in restaurants Chinese say “I want” where we’d say “I’d like.” The Chinese do not say “thank you” very much, certainly not to the extent that an American does. I’ve been told more than once to stop saying “thank you,” for it sounds like an insult.
Every time I have used polite English, I have been misunderstood. It hurts me to be grossly forward and demanding, using “I want” and “give me” where I feel I shouldn’t. My mother raised me well, I suppose you could say. “I’d like to see. . .” = “I want” whatever it is. My teeth are on edge just writing this! When they are this kind of foreign impolite, we foreigners must decide whether they are being rude or demanding or just culturally dependant; that is, they know no other way to speak. This sure points up the interference of native language in learning a second language. But. . .the problem isn’t theirs: it’s the foreigner’s. We’re in China: adjust!
It also points up a profound attitude problem that smacks of Houyhnhnm-reasoning. The Chinese have a cherished belief in foreigners, particularly Americans. They see us all through this filter, preferring not to hear or not believe anything to the contrary, even their experience. As if to say, because I believe it is so, it is so. As in: because the Houyhnhnm didn’t believe there was an island across the sea, it didn’t exist and therefore Gulliver as speaking untruth. End of subject.
Foreigners can’t win at this level and they can’t win at the cultural level. No matter how long a foreigner is in China, the Chinese will always have the advantage in any kind of bureaucratic or legal dealings since they know the slippery ins and outs. They are forever telling us we can never fully learn Chinese culture–but we must adjust 100%. And, though we also can garner guanxi关系, they are much more adept and much more capable of using it to their advantage and another’s disadvantage. I’ve never used mine except for personal benefit, thus creating owed guanxi.
The dictionary defines guanxi as “relations.” But there is far more to it than this. I think it is an untranslatable concept, though something similar to “the old boy system” comes moderately close. You build up guanxi and you give it away (owing guanxi). It’s a must in politics. Resource building might be another way of looking at it, though with resource building there’s no influence-type pressure being exerted at any time. Right now, I have no guanxi but I am ending up owing alot, for people are helping me in ways I do not know how to thank them for–and I will certainly pay them back with whatever I can do.
Guanxi: I was personal friends with the head of orthopaedics at a hospital. Whenever I went in about one problem or another, I could just bypass registering (a mighty one yuan per visit) and go directly to his office to be seen. He had other contacts that he used to help me. Guanxi. Sometimes, I would be seen before people who were in the clinic before me simply because I’m a foreigner. I do not like this and turn it down; doctors, though, can be very insistent. However, I gain an immense reputation for being thoughtful and considerate. Hefei University of Technology gives us the ability to travel to our apartment house by taxi; no Chinese staff in a taxi can take the taxi past the campus entry gate. We don’t use this very often. But these kinds of favor are looked on as giving guanxi and we ought to be thankful.
Guanxi is part of harmony. . .and foreigners are always disharmonious because we don’t understand Chinese culture and we don’t know how to communicate, especially inter-culturally. Never mind that we might already have experience in more than one cultural context: this is China. The Chinese believe this is the defining characteristic of their culture, their society, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. It is, however, more correct to say that they want it to be the defining characteristic with such intensity that they will not see it’s vast disharmoniousness.
Harmony is equated to balance, evenness, such that any action that causes an imbalance one way or another, is unwanted, bad. That is, Chinese believe that flatness equals balance and harmony. No emotion, up or down. Getting upset at injustice, for instance, and doing something about it is injurious to balance and harmony, for everything was fine before you raised up your ugly head. And it is right here that bullies and people like Hu Jia with even the slightest amount of authority or power gain the upper hand. They abuse their culture, society’s wish for ideal harmony. Never mind that in life, as in a chemical reaction, there is a constant shifting back and forth from one side of the equation to the other in order to find and maintain balance as the conditions are always changing. Nothing in nature is constant or flat, except the line on the monitor when you die.
This is how the Hu Jia’s of China abuse their culture. They get rid of someone they don’t like for some unfounded reason, no matter how outrageous, no matter how unsubstantiated, and no one does anything. They will not move from their position (they will not cooperate, I think this might be called). Now, if anyone confronts them in order to right the wrong, they are seen as making waves when, in fact, it is the Hu Jia type of individual who has begun the wave-making because everything was fine before they stuck their fingers in the mix. As she is challenged, she must rise to the defense, which is upsetting the balance–which was fine with the unilateral decision, she shouts–and that makes the justice-seeker a disturber of harmony. In actuality, it is the original decision that is disharmonious in motion. But, because someone is confronting the original decision, they are disharmonious. It is a no-win situation. A Mexican stand-off. And, so, nothing is ever accomplished allowing the Hu Jia’s of China to control their world, their fellow Chinamen. In this perversion of balance and harmony, the foreigner is forever on the losing end. Because the foreigner doesn’t understand anything about how Chinese culture, Chinese society works. Simply by being, a foreigner is disharmonious. It stands to reason: a foreigner is not Chinese. Because of harmony, no one will move to help the foreigner. In the educational world, being disharmonious is the end of any kind of advancement of career. And getting somewhere, becoming somebody is the driving force in Chinese society.
In a society that is based solely on getting, on the economic well-being of the individual, meaning is in having more. And more. Without this, people are nobodies. Nobody wants to be a nobody. In Chinese society, people are basically without power, power or control over their own lives, or a sense of purpose: there is no other ethico- moral basis for guiding life than the economic material well-being (thank you Marx). Which translates to the bottom line. Thus, any amount of control, any amount of power one can grasp is a heady cup and those people, those who feel they are nobodies, go overboard when they get it. (That they may be incompetent is only added color to nobodyhood.) They must prove to all and sundry that they are somebody, that is, that they are indeed important: Look at me! Look at me! And so Hu Jia’s abound in society. For some reason or other, especially in the educational sector. As the feeling of power, of being somebody is easiest to gain by victimizing, it is obviously in their favor to victimize those who have no recourse for revenge–and then subsidize their bloated heads with abuse of their socio-cultural idiom (harmony). The easiest to abuse and, therefore, the easiest bully-boy technique to get away with is abuse of the hapless foreigner. As Hu Jia so succinctly put it, “That’s life.”
And so it is that Hu Jia can engage in that audacious announcement that she is not going to honor the obligations of my contract at term’s end. Why? Because, quite simply, what am I going to do about it? (Let’s not question where that already allotted money is going, okay?)
In her rush to exert power and control and her self-righteous hatred, she is placing herself above the interests of her employer (Hefei University of Technology) and the students, of which she used to be one (her oral and culture teacher–an eminently qualified individual–reports she was never in class. She is denying the best education to others in order to crow and strut about.
Hubris is a kind of blowback.

The Logic of Chinese Education

Despite all my ranting and criticism, analysis and sardonic humor about Chinese education, specifically college/university education, there is a logic to it. To some Americans–or many Westerners in their generalized conglomeration?–this could be seen as balanced reporting. That weird argumentative genre that believes in equal time and no comment, no opinion, no judgment. . .in the name of objectivism so that there’s a blurring (to be polite) of what is acceptable and what is not, what is edifying and what is destructive.
This article isn’t balanced journalism. It isn’t without comment or a position. And it isn’t objective, the state of being neither this nor that and of less of a mind than Hamlet–a state of being that, in fact, does not exist. It is, indeed, not reporting, which is no more than he said-she said and comes very close to rumor, though closer to propaganda these days with planted stories or bought reporters, faux news. No. This article is an insightful assessment, an analysis of a disease inflicted with malice aforethought written by someone who has been involved in this educational system for the past seven years. I did not say “taught” because I would have to use “trying” to properly qualify the verb and the action.
I actually believed, in my naïveté, that China’s need for English teachers was a call for qualified, competent, knowledgeable teachers. In fact, it was (is) not. It was a call for warm bodies. These warm bodies are honored, behind snickers behind hands, with the euphemism of “expert” because they are native speakers. These people teach oral English to anywhere from 50-70 students/class and though they laugh at the pitiful job they can’t help doing and feel as if they’re taking the Chinese for the salary they come away with, they are the fools in their arrogance. They also teach what’s called culture but comes closer to 1960’s HS civics from a book that glorifies the top down nature of a government that knows all about what the people need and, in its wisdom, gives it. That is, they help the Chinese government disseminate the idea that all government is like their government. . .and that government is good and right. Propaganda. They teach, sometimes, writing, a skill that they themselves possess at a level comparable to a HS graduate or, best, a college freshman, and know next to nothing about language and its use, following a textbook, lecturing with occasional one-page “papers.” All give high grades. A necessity if they want to be seen as good teachers, teaching in China being a popularity contest. Occasionally, I’ve seen these native speakers, the great majority from the US, have a go at literature, basically reading the textbook and “teaching” the ideas and meanings the textbook proscribes, the students not bothering to read the assignments because, later, they’ll just memorize what’s in the book, which is where the test comes from, must come from. . . unless they take my literature course. Then they must think and produce a paper which, I’ve been told, is not teaching literature but teaching writing. Literature, in the Chinese university, is no more than “here is the story and this is what it means and this is what you need to know about the writer and this is how it fits in with socialist- communist theory.” The unqualified native speaker teaches this, too, and laughs all the way to the bank, he thinks, because of the next-to-no amount of work required. The laugh’s on him, not only because of the salary in comparison to all the Chinese staff get, but, even more grotesque, he is doing the government’s job of propagandizing the youngsters.
[The salary thing goes like this: the foreigner gets a higher salary than the Chinese professor and is also housed for free; but the Chinese teacher gets extra pay for holding one or another position (like dean or asst dean or dept head) and gets bonuses more than once a year--vacation bonuses, end of semester bonuses, bonuses based on teacher ratings--and is given, according to professorial status, a large housing allowance toward buying a house, sometimes, for full professors, enough to actually pay for the house outright. But the Chinese misdirect the foreigner by concentrating on "the salary" and, so, the foreigner is fooled into believing he's high paid.]
Warm bodies are necessary to satisfy the government’s demand that English be taught by native speakers. All the government–and the college/university–is interested in is numbers: how many foreigners. As if this is an indicator of quality, as if quantity equals quality. As odd as this might strike some, this is the same attitude that defines education in general: more = better. Not more facts as such, more information, but more and more of the same over and over again and tested into infinity.
Carolyn Baker notes in her interview with Frank Smecker (Beyond Statecraft; Navigating The Collapse Of Industrial Civilization), “Wouldn’t you agree that an educational system that can only produce standardized children by forcing them to take standardized tests five hours a day, four days a week, is functioning in a state of abject disintegration?” However, the State does not believe it is in a state of disintegration. The State believes that in controlling the amount of information that its youth are forced to suck up and the process to make sure they are sucking up just what they’re supposed to, it is protecting itself, the power hegemony. The State is engaging in autopoiesis, the eternal recreation of itself (Cf. Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis, Culture and Society).
It is this point, the control of knowledge and the way it is learned and classified, that this little essay is intended to present as the end-all and be-all of college and university education in China. That the Chinese State is engaging in this kind of behavior is a sign that it is in decline, that it is engaging in self-destruction believing that, instead, it is creating a situation that will enhance the continuation of itself into the unknown future, kind of like a perpetual motion machine based on the overall ignorance–especially ignorance of what’s happening in the outside world–of the populace; for the same process is elementary and middle school education. The problem with those who believe in perpetual motion machines is that they see energy as being linear when, in fact, it is a two-way street, especially considering that mass and energy are interchangeable. . .and chemical reactions are never stable, one-way affairs.
From the moment the children graduate into third grade, they have no free time. By the time they are in upper middle school, they are being educated 80 hrs/wk. I guess you could say this kind of education is pandemic, a pandemic that feeds on itself. The reason this is a sign of a state in decline is that the State finds it necessary to engage in such skullduggery, such deception of its populace in order to maintain its power and glory. If you want to control someone, you must lie to them. In China, the populace is aware they are being lied to; in the US this is, at best, a debatable point. The Chinese are aware that everything the government says is propaganda; the Americans, even when shown the lies, is not so aware. But the Chinese educational system lies about what it’s offering and most students accept this at face value, though they complain bitterly. Some, in college, actually are aware they are getting nothing.
Chinese textbooks are small, not very thick paperbacks that tell the student what they are learning and what it (all) means. In math, this is to be expected: there is only one right answer and the proofs only go in one direction. If you do it this way, you will always get the answer. But the teacher never makes up examples to let the students practice, they simply memorize the equations in the book and spit them back out on a test. With the sciences, there is no experimentation: the classes are lectures. All the students need do is memorize what the teacher tells them, which is just exactly what is in the textbook. There are descriptions but no pictures in art books. . .and some culture books. If a Chinese teaches writing–and many foreign language departments believe that only a Chinese can teach a Chinese how to write English–it is a lecture from a book with definitions I have found to be wrong. For instance, the definition of metonymy as given is actually the definition of euphemism (euphemism not being taught). But it’s of no account: this is what’s to be memorized for the test. There is no writing test. Writing itself is expressed as a 3-paragraph essay: introduction and telling of what it is you’re going to say, what you’re saying, a summary of what it is you’ve said. In other words, three paragraphs of the same information, often second-hand, generalizations and clichés. This is why they must study extra in order to pass the tests necessary for admittance to a Western university–and most never make it anyway, their writing is so poor.
The Chinese are involved in a mad, passionate love affair with clichés. Short-cuts to thinking for the mentally challenged. The one that is cast about most often and used insidiously in these essays (and everyday life) is, “every coin has two sides.” Make me puke! What a way to kill all argument and discussion: you have your opinion and I have my opinion and we are equal so they are both right. The end. How utterly safe! Not only for thoughtless students but for the State that wants no discussion, no criticism, no questioning of the power hegemon. This is also the way students are taught to write in Chinese: it is not a language-specific methodology. Not any more. Most don’t even know where and how their language developed. With the simplified forms mandated by Mao, all sense of pictograph, which helps immensely with learning, is gone: east, once a sun rising up in the middle of a tree (東), is now. . .I don’t know what (东); a car used to look like a wagon (車) but now I’m not sure (车) what it is.
All language is now utterly discursive and has a meaning, a meaning that the State has predigested for its students. There is no thought to words being anything more than black smudges on paper with strict, well-defined meanings, one for each word. The loss of the beauty and subtlety of ancient literature is not even felt, for standard interpretations are given for each poem, each story–just in case students get the wrong idea. Language, especially English, is no more than a tool. You use a wrench for a wrench job, you use a screw diver for a screw job.
Warm bodies, then, are not a threat. Well-qualified, competent foreign individuals are a threat. There exists with them the very real possibility that they will actually teach their students how to think, how to analyze and criticize. They will make their students work and will not arbitrarily give high grades. High grades not only indicating how well-liked the foreign teacher is but how wonderful the university is: look, see, how high our students score! Go to X University. It is good. Look how high its students score! And everyone must graduate. If not, it’s the university’s fault and their reputation is blackened. Even if the senior thesis or the Master’s thesis or the Doctoral dissertation is 100% plagiarized.
There is no thought to actually having students master their English. They will, after the foreigner, be ridden mercilessly on how to pass the next proficiency test and then this other one and anything they might have learned will be wiped out. Is it any wonder the countrywide fail rate for the final English proficiency test, the TEM-8, is 60%? With English being no more than a tool, there is little possibility that the student will understand how the language works, how it is so amazingly expressive and how unbelievable it is to them that they are not comprehended. . .or comprehend what’s said (and implied) to them. Words are words. They are utilitarian. There is no ambiguity, no extended metaphor, no transcendence. No imagination necessary. If you cannot think with your language skills, you are of no threat to anyone, especially the powers-that-be. . .the business that hires you.
This predigested meaning is not limited to English; there is a decided lack, in today’s world, of the ambiguity and depth of meaning that is the ear-mark of ancient Chinese. Modern Chinese is not even polite: I want, I want, I want. It’s an order: give me. 要 要 要 给我 (yao yao yao gei wo: want want want give me). Students are told just what this or that poem or story means. Metaphor is of no account. It might even be dangerous. There might be an understanding uncomfortable to the controlling regime. And the teacher may not be able to answer a question–if ever a question is asked (not likely).
The greatest early modern writer, Lu Xun, has been perverted and rerouted as being Communist when, in fact, Lu Xun was a vicious social critic and satirist and had no association with Communism or any other ~ism. Quotes are pounded into children’s heads and they learn not only to hate Lu Xun but to believe, as they are told, that his writing is all imagination and, thus, very difficult to understand, having no relationship with reality. Understanding him appropriately would be dangerous to the government, for Lu Xun’s take on governments and ~isms is well-illustrated in his The True Story of Ah Q, which the propagandists have made relate to only one isolated instance of such a perversion of justice: the Republican government of the guy who’s known in the West as Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jeishi), the warlord devil incarnate to the Communists, the bloodless Triad hit man the US supported in its sagacity as being the leader of worth. A man who makes John McCain’s temper tantrums dim to child’s play. A leader who sold out to the Japanese.
Ancient classical poetry, students are instructed, is of one kind only, one style, which discounts the other styles the great Du Fu wrote, some appearing to look like prose poetry. The Chinese government teaches, adamantly, that “it is this way this way this way!” There’s little corporal punishment at the college and university level but it is still practiced in elementary and middle schools in order that students learn their lessons–to the point that students must be taken to the hospital for treatment. (Not rumor: I was there. My office mate being that teacher, having beaten a boy about the head. Another teacher crowed about how he enjoyed whipping his students’ legs and making them cry and beg for mercy.)
Education in China is for domination and control. And, as with all control, this requires lying by those wishing to dominate and control. What is the lie? That students are getting an education. Even more than the US’s deconstruction of university education to a vocational school, Chinese education is no more than preparation for a job, a job with a higher salary–what’s ubiquitously called “a better job.” To hell with desire or liking or satisfaction. It is necessary to get that better, higher paying job. Because, in a Marxist dictatorship, no matter how true to form or perverted, economic gain is what it’s all about. Interestingly, this is also what a Capitalist society teaches. What a conundrum. Father Thomas Berry makes it clear when he writes, “both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to the vision of industrial progress. . .” (The Dream of the Earth, as quoted in Carolyn Baker). And industrial progress ad infinitum as the end-all and be-all of society and civilization is a superhighway to collapse, to self-destruction. As we are witnessing at the moment.
Chinese education may be, for the Chinese State, a case of “be careful what you wish for,” for the proscribed world is changing and beginning to unravel (Cf. the writings of Li Datong at www.opendemocracy.com). The State wants faux knowledge because ignorance will work to maintain the State’s continuation. Such a kind of knowledge, utilitarian and limited, will end up stultifying society because there is no thought, no imagination allowed. And the people will become restless because, like genocide, there will always be some knowledge left, some knowledge ready to wreak its vengeance, someone who feels the loss as there is never any way to wipe out all of one’s enemy. In their discomfort, their ennui, people will want something more. As is already evident by the rise of unrest, protest and rebellion and the openly expressed knowledge by some students that Chinese education is wanting and want to get further education overseas. Most students, though, are quite satisfied with knowing next to nothing, for putting out the least amount of work is an ethical prerogative and something to be proud of. They will, after all, be graduated regardless. Knowledge is unimportant to that pie-in-the-sky better job. The piece of paper, however, is.
A false bottomed boat to advancement and improvement.
As US education is more and more being reframed as utilitarian and test-based, it is not too far out of bounds to see that US civilization is sliding right into a new Dark Ages where all shining examples of intellectual greatness will be something to be found somewhere else. And there will be no advancement, except down, down, down into a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It must be admitted that Deng Xiaoping realized this when he opened up the country to the rest of the world after the rigid, unyielding oppression by his predecessor. But, then, he shut the system down with Tiananmen Square. After that debacle (Cf. Sage Publications’ Encyclopedia of Social Activism), Deng imposed great restrictions on education, mostly by way of overloading students with required coursework and highly structured out-of-class activities (not extra-curricular, as such courses are required and graded) and proscribed government textbooks and more testing to make sure that the disorderly students learn appropriately, learn their place appropriately. . .or they will have their funding rescinded. The situation is somewhat less obsessively repressive today but, in truth, not by much.
No Child Left Behind. In two countries.
The rich, of course, get a better education so they can continue to dominate the government. They, like the US dilettantes, can afford to pay for it.

Self-defense and Insecurity: eternal materialist ethos

Roland Michel Tremblay wrote ironically concerning the human state (War is the only language humanity understands at http:www.atlanticfreepress.comnews110127-war-is-the-only-language-humanity-understands.html) that is double-fisted, I think, and powerful.

His article is so close to cynicism, though I will go farther than just agreeing wholeheartedly with his assessment of the seeming behavior humankind engages in, behavior that belittles and begrudges and sends people rushing headlong for oblivion just as surely as a rabid dog runs in a direct line toward death, biting and foaming all the way, blind to its own demise, driven like a jack hammer into hardest concrete, a ram and a dam.

I can show that, indeed, an entire country enables such behavior and it is everyday. One could say, expected, accepted behavior. A style of living that colors every aspect of life with a fury only seen by sex-crazed dope fiends in cartoon propaganda, meant to convince you that feeling good is bad for you and for the world, yet so subtly woven into the fabric of being that it goes unnoticed because that’s just the way it is folks, that’s the bouncing ball.

This is a materialistic society. Not just any materialistic society, for Europe, The Middle East and parts of Africa and the Americas are also materialistic. But they all have underlying ethico-moral bases, however falsely they are practiced. No. I am speaking about a society in which all social and individual ethics have been wiped out and replaced by economic well-being and the seeming endless need for more. More equaling better. More equaling status and status somebodyness. More being akin to an obsession seen only in horror movies. More’s drive is to be expected in a society based, designed and run on economics, on the principle that having more of anything, whether concrete or abstract–even delusional–is The Way.

In this world, sameness and an ethical barrenness create immense pressure to achieve–and there are no limits on methodology. The end justifies the means just as long as I succeed in getting more and more.

All life’s various activities and aspects have a price in this kind of life. No one excepted. No one is left out–though some go without. But some must die for others to live, right? It is the way of the world. It’s what it’s all about. Selfishness. Soulless self-promotion. Me. Me. Me. No one is at all interested in questioning, how much is life worth?

What a silly thing to worry your pretty little head about– a life’s worth.

People are only interested in getting more, because more is life: more getting than having. As a consequence, these people fill up their lives with busy bee-like work. They don’t understand the concept of free time, free time is idle time and time spent at nothing–and the getting nothing of any worth is damnable, incomprehensible, unheard of. Go work, young man, go work!

With such a society, perhaps the place where this is glaringly evident is in academia. To be more precise, in colleges and universities, for in this microcosm more is the true driving force, kind of like the more that drives lemmings off the cliff, frantic and frenzied and frothing. Over time, it becomes neurotic obsession. An adrenalin rush existence. A Mœbius strip living of life, a life with a life of it’s own. A robot run amuck. A never-ending story.

It begins, as everything does in this pinched world, with lucre and getting more of it. More money means not only the ability to buy more and get a better living, it means power and status, therefore it re-feeds the system, for higher degrees mean more money, better living and more of everything. Higher degrees also mean prestige and power. More power. And people with power are somebodies. Because power leads to getting more of anything and being able to use pressure and coercion with impugnity, for no one wants to be nobody. How special and appealing is the higher degree, the somebodyness? Admittance is limited. . .severely. So there must be compensation for the loss. The loss must get made up because nobody wants to be without, without something. It’s all about equality.

So, while most bitterly complain of this state of affairs, how delimiting it is, everyone plays the game, as to not play is suicide. No one really wants death. Death is like being a nobody, a non-entity, a no-account. Everyone wants to live but it’s hard to let live when doing so begets another’s ascent. Abuse is rampant, so much so that it seems the conditions in Shui hu zhuan, a vicious satire of Ming corruption set in the Song dynasty, are still alive. In this work, a band of robbers led by Song Jiang play Robin Hood in protest against government policy and corruption. Corruption that reached deep into everyman’s life to deprive him of what little he had so that another might thrive. In modern times, it’s not so different. In truth, all Song Jiang wants is to be part of the machine itself and benefit from the power and corruption: be somebody. Because without this ability, you are a nothing. Nobody. A loser. Nothing’s are intolerable to the goose-stepping march to more and more.

This is an important point, this being somebody, in such an egalitarian society where all are the same, a society in which everyone is a worker, come what may.

What does your mother do?

She’s a worker?

What kind of work does she do?

She’s the mayor of my hometown.

What does your mother do?

She’s a worker?

What kind of work does she do?

She sweeps floors.

Everyone is a nobody when everyone is the same. Everyone feels it so. Feels nobodyness. And no one likes it, because as when you’re nobody, you’re characterless. Even worse: you’re not an individual. Everyone wants to be recognized as an individual, someone of some worth. When you’re a nothing you’re all the same with everybody and evermore shall be so. Like. . .foreign musicians are contracted by cities and organizations to perform and hold Master Classes. Master Classes are for the more advanced students anywhere but in an egalitarian society: these invited Master Musicians are holding Master Classes because they are the Masters and all students attend. Because everyone is equal. No one can be different or better than. 

So the more subtly somebody becomes somebody, the better. For you cannot stick out or you’ll be pounded down. Everybody’s the same. It is all stealth status. Status by influence. Status by proxy–a phone call, a little birdie whispering sweet nothings that blossom to power.

The more status, the better, the more of a life you have to live in this tin world. Which translates to: I’m somebody. Because a somebody can do things to others. Like organized crime: before you’re somebody, you must off somebody. Which actually might be doing something for somebody since they’re being relieved of the burden of being in such a wheeler-dealer world, akin to swimming in great white shark-infested waters: when the sharks get hungry, the easiest, most direct thing to do is push someone else into their waiting jaws, everyone else being fodder for your survival.

In the base lower animals–humans considering themselves higher–somebody power is by way of intimidation and shows of prowess: teeth bared and growling, beating on chests. In the higher animals–who have not been around as long– somebodyness power comes by way of trampling the other so that he may not rise again. . .and then, only then shows of prowess. The lower animals–who have been around longer–are so backwards.

The name of the game is wipe-out.

When you’re the only one left, you’re not #1. Though some might say this makes you alpha and omega. God. God has no friends. God creates from chaos, out of aloneness. Only people create chaos out of aloneness. And in this made up world, everyone is alone. No one has a true friend. No one tells another her inmost secrets or feelings, or confides their perceived shortcomings and weaknesses as they are all frightened that this will be used against them, as they most certainly will if it means getting somewhere; that is, rising above; that is, getting to somebodyness is inhuman. No one confides that they are having a difficult time, have a problem coping or that they cannot solve, for it means they are weak. Everyone is expected to do it all by themselves, for you must be strong. All of the time. No weakness, no self-doubt, no questions allowed. Inhuman. Everyone isolated.

You might think everyone walks around in shell shock. Yet one of the most used clichés of this world is “no man is an island,” though all are solitary. And they believe they are a “one for all, all for one” harmonious culture. They forget the Three Musketeers had their fallings out and their failings.

Everyman is a threat to everyman’s being a somebody.

Until recently, a BA could land you in the lowest rung of college life. A real nobody. But, lately, a person needs to have a Master’s. The BA’s are relegated to middle school and private school status. The bottom of the heap. A lecturer is without any power or prestige. Lecturers are given the dross of the teaching load. The sole way of gaining a modicum of recognition, of being a being of status is to make friends in the right places. These friends are not in reality friends, for they are only around for self-promotion–but, of course, you must always thank them. . .and then move to another one.

Up, up and away! It’s the name of the game. That’s life, sailor. Screw you.

The first step along the way is to do nothing to upset anybody. Do not let on you are jockeying for power or to be better. No one must see that you are being different or out of the ordinary. How many clichés do we have for this?

Then comes toadying. Once a friend, a cultivated supporter, has been acquired, muscle-flexing is in order, the kind that will limit competition. Every person is a competitor and every competitor is a threat to the security and satisfaction of even the most blatant untoward somebodyhood. It simply will not do to be relegated back to nobodyhood. Everybody else is a competitor, whether real or no. You do something for your friend and then for yourself: via, veritas, vita.

Friends in high places must be sown and grown forever and a day.

At this point, it is just wound, wound, wound. Assistant professors get to disable and associate professors get to kill and full professors want to be the Dean. At which point they have “arrived.” Though I do know a newly minted Master’s who believes– and behaves–as if he has arrived. As an undergrad, he was the star of the Foreign Language School of his university, graduating #1. He was ushered into grad school without submitting him to the usual entrance exam. He was the top student there, too. A regular teacher’s pet. And then he was brought into the Foreign Language School as assistant professor and made a vice-dean. He has so arrived that he tells foreigners, native-speakers of his second language, that they are not speaking their language properly. Even doctors and writers are so notified. This man has had no experience at all. But that’s okay. He has position. He has power. He has friends. Authority in this world is not founded upon competence at all. (Cf. “The Hoax: China’s Education,” http:www.atlanticfreepress.comnews19833-the-hoax-chinas-education.html).

Competence of any sort is, indeed, a threat to power and being somebody and must be stomped out if it is below, above or on a level with yours. If someone else’s competence limits the more of the somebodyhood that is so prized in an economically-based egalitarian society, the more of material gain is lost. For there is then nothing to strive for when all there is is money without satisfaction–what does it get you, yeah? So any and all competence from any quarter leads to kill or be killed. I am the all important one.

Hell!–beat a dead horse–kill. Kill. Kill! Kill! I am #1! Me! Me! Look at me! Me! Watch me do my victory dance on the bodies of victims. Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the music! Skip to my lou, my darling.

All comers are threats to being somebody, even if they are outsiders barred from playing the game because they are outsiders and thus ignorant of the way of the world.

It is of great import that they just might be more competent and surely then show up “my” incompetence and that would be embarrassing and that would be destructive to “my” sense of myself, of being somebody and my ability to wield effectively power (to gain more). All people are of the same type to the inhabitants of this petty little world.

Out damnéd spot!

There are deans who will go to any extreme to insure their power remains theirs alone by setting out to methodically destroy a perceived blot to their reputations by black-listing a man, who is no threat at all. He is just doing his job. Very well. A job the Dean knows little about but wants to see happen–if it does not require any work on his part. Won’t do to fail! Oh, no, no. Not that. Gotta save my ass. Get the upstart! To be or not to be, that is the question.

The Dean wanted to be and this other would be a blot on his reputation. Because he was eminently qualified to do. The Dean just didn’t figure he’d have to do any work. He never had in the past. Had a reputation for doing nothing and laying the blame. In truth the Dean was like the man who died from not eating for fear of choking. Death from I dare not stared him in the face, though he saw it as death from I dare. How twisted are the turnings of thought.

It took him six months to ruin this man’s career beyond redemption, as rumors from above are beyond all question. For in an authoritarian society, what’s said at the top rules the roost–and rumors travel very well, thank you very much. Faster than flu pandemics that never pan out, fear being the driving force behind decisions, fear of this, fear of that and the other. A heady anxiety.

Or. . .the collusion of a dean and another teacher to rid themselves of trouble via a vice-dean, out-spoken and strong and not about to back down, a real sop to self-elevation and awe, therefore a barrier to be defeated in no uncertain terms. There can be only one voice at the top speaking for all. So, they paid a student to say she paid her to take a proficiency test for her–which she didn’t. But who cares for the truth when it’s me has to win it all at all costs?

But. . .the vice-dean was not in situ. She was overseas studying methodology. No matter. She returned to disgrace and embarrassment and no job, much reduced retirement and, therefore, much reduced living. Such is life. In a world without cooperation, there is only sub-human thoughtless self-satisfaction–King of the Mountain.

The end-times coming round the bend. Because there can only be one left withal.

Scruples are for shit. The American Me Generation had nothing on these people. How can there be guilt or recrimination or even this thing that we call humanity in a world where money and power and position, possession for me is the only guiding light? The true real world realization of Roland Tremblay’s fine ironic selfishness. A world at war with itself, at war with all that makes up a Life. This is the future of this kind of a world, the here-and-now: that it will overtake the soul of mankind and lead us, scratching and snarling and spitting and back-biting, like a cat gang bang, to the end times. Armageddon. This world is its own anti-Christ, no help from myth and metaphor mandated.

Thank god that the youth–some of the youth–too few of the youth caught up in the game–are questioning. But how long will it be before there’s a change, when they have to play the game to get anywhere to begin with, eh? A sharp pinch indeed.

Nobody always wants to be somebody.

But this power and prestige somebodyness game doesn’t begin and end with the academic staff; it is played by the non-academic staff, if on a more petty–and sometimes much more devastating–level. With the support staff, the possibilities for remuneration are limited, so the drive is for power, as power equals importance equals somebodyness. And like all predators, victims are the helpless.

Thus, if an office is opened at 8 o’clock no one, not even the office manager, arrives before 8 to make sure everything is in order. No. No. Everyone arrives around 8 and, while all who wish to do business are waiting, begin to ready and organize themselves for the day’s business–for up to 20 minutes. It is of no consequence that people are waiting or that some have made appointments. What is important is the importance of getting ready and keeping people waiting. You can see these employees looking out of the corners of their eyes at how important they are: important is how many people can I keep waiting. I control all that happens at this time and this place. You must deal with me. Are the waiting professors who have class going to be made late for class? Tough. Let them wait. They cannot do anything in my office without me. I am important!

Particularly in the university credit union or financial department is this evident. Evident to the extent that staff are asked if it’s alright to wait an extra week to get their pay because. . .whatever. Do they have a choice? No. People in this society do not complain. They put up with all sorts of abuse, as if it is their lot in life to suffer. Oh, oh! Woe is me! Woe is me!

The most abused and victimized victims are the foreigners who cannot function in this country without the paperwork of the Foreign Affairs Office. Often, this is at the goodwill of Foreign Affairs. For without the proper paperwork, there is no job and no ability to stay in-country–except as a tourist, which limits all job opportunities no end, since a tourist visa cannot be changed into any other sort. Most foreigners are hired and cut loose at the whim of the Foreign Affairs Office, the Foreign Language schools be damned, the university itself be damned–this is all that I, the Foreign Affairs Office, want. And, in such a way, then, I become the most important person in the world in the university since state and local funding is partially based on how many foreigners are employed. And I get to say so.

See the peacock strut and show his tail.

They are such ill-tempered creatures that it behooves everyone to remain on their good side. Do they know anything about academics or what the outsider brings to the college, outside of her native tongue? No. And no need. Any pretext is fine for firing. Because being somebody is having power and control. It is more important.

It is common knowledge that when you are controlled, you are being lied to, for it is only via lying that someone can gain such control over anybody else. . .especially nobodies who, being nobody, will believe whatever it is they’re told. After all, who are you to question me?!

The longer the administrative staff works, the higher their pay and the more status they gain; therefore, the more power. It is in this way, by cultivating friendships, they gain some kind of control, not only over their lives but over others’. . .the which is the most important. It means I have something nobody else has and that makes me someone.

Lateral promotions may not equate to more financial reward but may equate to power and prestige. Sometimes, these are just temporary and the extra knowledge and relations gotten carry over to the prior job, making these people formidable indeed. Indeed, the only rule, the rule extraordinaire, is to not upset anyone.

At the same time, there is a tendency to bully and because the smooth running of the system is of ultimate importance, no one will confront the bully for fear of being accused of upsetting the apple cart. Even more, creating animosity that will eventually turn into vengeful retaliation. That is, these bullies abuse their culture in order to get ahead, gain power, prestige, gain control. All because further up the ladder is material wealth and well-being–in one form or another. And power helps you get it. Ergo, it’s good. For the people with little, this material wealth takes the form of the exercise of power, a mind-altering drug if ever there was one. It makes you feel so great–shot of adrenalin. Eyes popping, take a deep breath, flare those nostrils, breath in that clean clean air!

Nobody wants to be nobody. Power equals worth and worth can lead to material well-being–at least, a social security. A good retirement. The ability to say, as Robert Frost noted, to your grandchildren that you actually did something. . .and it wasn’t easy. That road less taken is the one not littered with the bodies of your victims and, therefore, is the one most wanted to be viewed by others.

Murder is easy in a materialistic society, a desert society of getting, where there is no rain to grow with, yet more being a sign of status and having arrived, despite the stunted growth and twisted form of the life, the more convolutions being more opportunities for the sustenance of getting and being somebody. When is the pinnacle reached?

When is enough, enough?

The manic always crash.

Alexander Saxton, in Religion and the Human Prospect, queried evil and noted that no religion, no ethical imperative has yet solved evil’s existence–continued existence. But he was working within an ethico-moral context, where evil (“live” backwards) is a conundrum. Whereas this world I am talking of has no sense of ethics. Marx and his slavish and dogmatic followers have seen to that, banning all systems purveying ethics in the name of freeing the people from oppression and enslavement, seeing such mores as no more than social hogwash meant to make people bow down to authority rather than a guidance system for proper behavior, a system perverted by those at the top to insure their continuance ad infinitum. His changing the worldview was like destroying it to save it. So that the world created was devoid of all but equal gain by human clones. There is nothing higher than what you see is what you get. So there are, too, no philosophers in this world. It is a barren desert despite–or, rather, in spite of its materialism.

What is material well-being when people are things to be manipulated in this world of crassness? A Gobi Desert of a society with shifting sands around the edges, rocks and pebbles at its centre. And soon it can be no more than a wasteland with nary a one to note its passing on.

Yet this is not eviltry but a lack of a sophisticated mind, it is a total lack of flexible cooperation in the name of projection of destruction; that is, all see all as out to get them and thus create the scenario that rationalizes behavior. This stops them from being able to solve problems. . .of any sort. Because they are intolerant in their drive for dominance, like many chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees will cooperate only with familiar group members, with whom they normally share food. If they don’t know or like a potential partner, they won’t cooperate no matter how much food is at stake. Humans, however, make a living collaborating, even when it’s with people they don’t know and in many cases don’t particularly like. (Do you have a boss?) This high level of social tolerance is likely one of the building blocks of the unique forms of cooperation seen in humans. (Out Of Our Minds: How Did Humans Come Down From The Trees And Why Did No One Follow?, Vanessa Woods & Brian Hare, at www.edge.org3rd_culturewoods_hare09woods_hare09_index.html).

As if to say, these materialists are sub-human, no?

Bonobos are different. And apes are different. The chimpanzee problem is that if the resources are all in one pile, as it were, there can be no cooperation because there’s only one pile and one pile cannot be shared. It’s all mine or it’s not. There is no ability to think beyond the self, projecting that thinking–either I get it or I die– onto every other chimp. Or, in this case, person. With people like this, like intolerant, uncooperative chimpanzees, we are a long way from discovering just exactly what it is that makes some of us human and some of us perversions–or would that be reversions?

So. . .what has happened to the hominid that evolved many millions of years ago into a tolerant, spontaneously cooperative animal?

How society has deteriorated! The examples held up for us all to follow, examples that are supposedly inviolable, are empty waste cans. They are putrid, like the vomit on the street before bars. What can be said of a society when people buy their status and sell their allegiance in the name of expediency? How is it that we are to show any respect whatsoever for those who know no ethical or moral law? For ideals and ethical standards have deserted the human condition in such a world of materialism, of economic well-being being the well made end-all and be-all of life. With the selling of their souls, their natural prestige and ethics become mere commodeties on a bullish market. When you buy values, what do you buy but emptiness? This behavior muddies the waters of proper comportment and personal relations and leads to an increase in collusion, conspiracy and violence. It is clear to see. For what cannot be bought, can be stolen. And thus total ethical dissipation brings about the ruin of the country. . .of the world. As Confucius saw during the Warring States Period and the Spring and Autumn Era (at about the same time Greece was golden).

Back to the jungle!

 

 

 

Inside Education in China

Inside the halls of academe, reside students who are dissatisfied with their lot: either their ideas and desires for college life are not met or they become well-aware that they’re not really learning anything. Of course, these are the better sort, for there is a preponderance of not caring one way or another: all that’s important is the piece of paper. And. . .once into a college or university, a student is guaranteed to graduate, no questions asked, no work required. Just pass a test. College course life is similar to high school and middle school minus the immense time commitment. In middle and high school, the school week is around 80 hrs, sometimes with one day off, sometimes with none (Sunday evening taken up by coursework). In middle and high school, students learn that what’s important is passing the next test, with greatest pressure on college admission, for the more who manage this, the higher the school’s prestige–and many of these schools take in private, out of town students, so the tuition can also increase with prestige. . .though the teaching quality will not. Why bother–they are successful as it is! You cannot improve on success.

So, a routine is learned: cram for this test, forget it, cram for the next, don’t worry about performing in class or even paying attention, for all that matters is cramming for the next test and passing it. The course material is simple beyond measure: if you memorize the facts and standpoints given you, you will pass the test; the course content is geared to the test, knowledge or the testing of knowledge is of no account. Indeed, it appears that armed with facts and information, students are incapable of relating any to any other: everything is isolated. With Bush’s No Child Left Behind, this is where US education is headed: no one will know anything more than a bunch of isolated facts, no one will be able to use that information. . .except on a test, a special test assessing one piece of information: science is not related to life or the humanities or psychology or history–and none of these is related to any other. In fact, I had an entire class of graduate students in economics tell me that economics has nothing to do with humanity. . .or people. So it is here, in China, the paranoia- generating behemoth from the East Americans are supposed to fear unto death.

Herein, too, lies the observation that Chinese are such good studiers. True, they must study all the time but it’s not because they know how to study effectively; it’s because when you cram, you forget soon after the test and when you cram for the next test you must reinvent the wheel, that is, study everything you’ve forgotten from before plus everything new. It’s a never-ending process. They know no other way and are resistant to change, though mouthing the need for something different. Even the colleges say they want something different but don’t want to do anything about it: there’s only one way to satisfy government directives. . .even though the government wants alternative methods. For teachers, like students, there is only one way.

Unlike the States, corporal punishment is rampant in Chinese middle and high schools. Children are beaten with broom handles or other implements of destruction, they are kept standing in hallways for hours, they are yelled at and debased in a kind of Stalinist manner. In general, they are treated fairly badly, as if they’re not worth very much–a few crumbs of goodwill alleviating the grind. I worked with one teacher who beat a student about the head so badly that he had to be taken to the hospital. When the father showed up to get things settled–700 RMB (about $100)–all this teacher did for the rest of the day was complain about having to hand over all of his savings: what a bastard this father was. He saw no wrong. When the school was alerted, nothing was done, not even a reprimand. Another teacher at this same school enjoyed beating his students on the legs with broom handles, making sure he hurt them and made them cry; he enjoyed telling me this, smiling and laughing at the pain inflicted. He’s considered one of the better teachers. The result is to turn out well-trained, mindless clones, all life and creativity crushed. In general, this is a success.

In colleges, head teachers, teachers in charge of sections of students (like US high school homeroom teachers) are verbally abusive and intensely strict, often requiring their charges to show up for study in their classroom. Roll is taken and if they happen to not be there–even if they find the library more conducive to working–they are punished. I’ve not heard of any corporal punishment on this level. Students are forced to take elective classes, though in some schools there is a nice selection; in some schools, however, the entire class must take the same course, the one most students want. They are given a grade for these extra-curricular classes, as they are called. I was stuck with 100 students in one of these extra-curricular courses: drama. What am I going to do with 100 students who only see drama as acting? I found out most were not interested but had to take something and this course sounded the least offensive. I solved my problem: everyone not interested in acting or directing did not have to come as long as I had a class list. If they showed up for the production, I’d give them a good grade. My cast and crew amounts to 11, four of them from my freshman writing classes (this drama class was only for sophomores). I told the dean when interference from another teacher caused concerns; he found nothing at all wrong with this solution to the problem of too many students.

Although I’ve dealt with students in the sciences and economics/business and though what I’ve got to say can be generalized to these subject areas, I am speaking from the humanities end of the spectrum, specifically foreign language learning. As this is more especially English, I will dispense with the other language choices in short order: they are considered “second” language choices (there is only an English or a Chinese language major) and, so, are only indulged in to the point that the student can pass a minor proficiency test. No other ability is needed. Discovering someone who speaks and handles Japanese, French, German, Russian is discovering someone who has done it on their own, out of their own self-interest. So. . .to work. . .

The structure of the English curriculum, ending with a BA in language and literature, is multiple year long courses in writing and speaking and what’s called culture–all repetitious. There is a year of literature: one semester of British, one semester of American. There is a semester of linguistics: I’ve yet to meet a student who thought this course was anything other than boring. It is, after all, geared to the mandatory linguistics exam required of all English majors. There are no standard course offerings for the inner workings of Western culture: Greek and Roman mythology or Christian stories/influence, unless a special offering, by an exceptional foreigner, i.e. someone with the requisite knowledge. That is, occasionally you find someone doing a special course but students are totally unable to see the relationship between these things and literature and culture and the department smiles benignly at a nice course offering that really has nothing to do with anything–but it looks good. Although I taught a semester in one college, I did not do a good job; I met an exciting foreigner who was a classics major. Not even top 10 universities have such an in-depth offering.

Within these various English courses, the job is to memorize alot of facts, as given by the professors, who come into the classrooms, lecture didactically and leave: no interaction. They are told, “This is what this story or novel means.” As in, War and Peace means “war is hell.” That’s why Tolstoy wrote it. Let’s move on. EM Forster’s The Road to Colonus is just a little story of an old man on vacation in Greece who has an odd experience and then returns home to banging pipes and irritation. Jane Eyre is a love story, a feminist love story. So is Pride and Prejudice, though there is a social comment involved. . .centred on love, of course. Doris Lessing’s stories are about class issues–class conflict. Metaphor counts for naught. Symbolism is an unknown, unmentionable. . .thing. And there is no theory of literature. Ah!–I feel Edgar Allan Poe writhing in his Baltimore grave.

What it all amounts to is simply “this is the way it is, this is what’s going on, this is what it means” so this is memorized for the semester’s end test. Et voilà!–passing grade. In fact, the teacher says nothing different from what’s written in the textbook, virtually reading the commentary and not bothering with whether students have read the selection. Because it’s not important. Teachers say it is boring. Students say it is boring. But there’s no other way to do it. The test! The test!

Writing isn’t much different. They’ve been instructed to write a specific way and any other way is not right, dammit! Even if the knowledge comes from a professional writer. This “way” is simple: three paragraphs. . .introduction, discussion, conclusion. The end. Everything is a generalization or a cliché–the Chinese are overly fond of clichés!–or the summary of what someone else has said (as found in the book). Or just plagiarism–the best students do it. I know of one student whose senior graduation thesis was 100% plagiarized: I was the reader. The English School Dean passed her with the lowest grade (60)–to save face. Can you imagine the message that would be sent round about cheating and competence? No. What’s important– face–is 100% graduation, on time. This was at a top 10 university. My mentored student did an analysis of Billy Budd based on Suzanne Langer’s theory of literature, graduated #1 in the school, didn’t have to test into gradate school and went on to a Fulbright Fellowship Lecture on American literature at the University of Hong Kong–a year before eligible. She was the grossest of exceptions. She is the highlight of my teaching career, though all who have been mentored by me garner “best thesis” awards, sometimes to the chagrin of some department officials. (Ahh–the tales I could tell!)

What it all amounts to is: this is the only information we want you to have. It is purposefully limiting knowledge–to use the word lightly–because any more would be threatening. It is politically and socially necessary for people to know not very much of anything, particularly of the outside world. My students of business and international trade majoring in English too have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world, believe whatever the press says and tell me I’m lying when I give them US statistics and start talking of the bad loans, mortgages and bundling that all countries have bought into. They write off the poverty and beggars on their streets because–gosh!–the economy is growing at 9-10%! Their teachers tell them all they need to know. End of discussion.

I, however, teach differently; and my students come out better performers all around, showing the school off to good measure. . .and then I’m dumped. Alternative methods are verboten. There is no instant gratification. What about the test? Well. . .

I taught, my first semester in China, graduate non-English majors. Engineering Master’s students. The name of the course was Oral English. I was filling in. It was supposed to prepare them for their upcoming English competency test, a test they must pass in order to graduate. There’s no oral component to this test. So, I restructured the course, giving them more listening and writing. They complained but, in the end, I had an 88% pass rate. The average passing score usually is in the low 60’s; my students’ average passing score was over 70. I was relieved of this job and it was handed to someone more conventional, teaching the same old way–and the scores fell back to “normal.” The Vice-Dean of Graduate Education would not talk to me, would not even acknowledge my presence. I’m still in touch with many of those students.

Pretty much the same thing happened in my English major writing and literature classes: test scores were higher and more managed to get into grad school. However, I was told by one vice-dean that a literature final that was a paper was not about literature but about writing: what was I doing?!

But, though I’ve sent several abroad for further study, they have a difficult time getting into the better schools because the depth of literature knowledge I can give them is so very limited: two semesters. They don’t read well, either, not going beyond the surface, the words on the page; two semesters doesn’t cut it. There is little to no knowledge of how metaphors work or, for that matter, that literature is metaphor– unless they take my class. Not one Chinese teacher I’ve spoken to has any idea of a theory of literature or critiquing (outside of The New School–and that’s only via a glossing mention). As noted above, it means “this.” Some have even questioned me, “What are you teaching?” Well, I teach thinking and skills. No, no. What’s important is the test, the next nationally standardized test. “The students can’t see past this. What are you doing?”

So. . .I gave a multiple choice exam for literature one semester. It required thinking and having paid attention to what I said in class. The staff were flustered and demanded, as if I was fucking stupid and didn’t know what I was doing, that I support my reasons for giving a test they could not answer the questions of. I gave them the answers. My students averaged 78 with one failure (a surprise). All passed the course.

Example question:

11. Although the terms regionalism and local color are sometimes used interchangeably, regionalism generally has broader connotations. Whereas local color is often applied to a specific literary mode that flourished in the late 19th century, regionalism implies a recognition from the colonial period to the present of differences among specific areas of the country. Additionally, regionalism refers to an intellectual movement encompassing regional consciousness beginning in the 1930s. In The Awakening Chopin frequently focused on the Creole culture of Louisiana. Unique regional features included a heritage that drew from French and Spanish ancestry, a complex caste system, the settings of urban New Orleans and rural vacation retreats like Grand Isle (located on the Gulf Coast). How does Chopin cast cultural differences into sharp relief?

a) By the outsider, Edna Pontellier, who is from Kentucky, not the Louisiana south

b) By switching the story from one place to another

c) By the changes in Robert

d) By the almost eternal absence of Edna’s husband

 

This questioning of method even applies to my writing class. How dare me teach them what writing is or how to write! There is a way to write and teach writing and it’s out of this textbook, so I should lecture them on this material; there is no need for them to write so much–or even write a final exam. A multiple choice question test is appropriate. Never mind my history of success. The students need to pass the next test. What use are skills?

There are knowledgeable professors. I’ve met them. I wonder how they escaped educational blight. But, by the same token, how did I escape high school with a love of reading and language? But they are caught in the net and if the students complain they are forced, under threat of firing–which mean the end of their careers–to do it the old way. . .even when they are sent abroad for alternative method training. Teaching in China is a popularity contest: the more our students like you, the greater your salary and climb up the ladder to full professor–even without a Ph.D. Popularity. Who cares if performance and ability is enhanced. This is one reason foreigners give high grades. As one foreigner told me: teaching in China is a dream as long as you’re not interested in teaching them anything. I’m a slow learner. No. Obdurate. I worked by butt off, being told I was too stupid to get a four-year degree and find slackers disgusting insults.

In China, it is not a little knowledge that is a dangerous thing but any knowledge. The political leaders come out of Beijing University (Peking University) or Renmin University, as America’s “best and brightest” (who have brought down the world) matriculated from Harvard. And this is where US education is headed. It will be a long time before the newer generation of America produces an intellectual giant.

The Hoax: China’s Education

If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, as “ddjango” maintains, then there is little in the Chinese university culture that could possibly lead one to believe that there will be, any time soon, an intellectual giant. This is especially so if we add into the mix present behavior. What I have to say is based on personal experience and anecdote and actual occurrences suffered by friends. Nevertheless, it will sound like a hatchet job, much like Jung Chang’s Mao, the unknown story. But I’m going to say it nonetheless–I’ve even written a play about it, a satire that is most cynical and being translated into Chinese for a commissioning agent. It is set in the 13^th century, way out in the northwest where corruption and. . .whatnot were rampant, so it’s safe. Unfortunately for China, it still is corrupt out there, which may be why there’s little to no investment in business in the area. It is a place that is, in terms of employment, off limits to me: they don’t like me out there.

I must admit right up front that I have a slight flaw that seems to have caused me considerable difficulty: corruption seems to fall into my lap, uninvited. It is, to be sure, the reason I came to China to begin with: corruption in Missouri State Vocational Rehabilitation that went all the way to the governor’s office. There was no help for me. My employer, an independent living organization, was bought off. And now there is next to nothing, less than they had before. But Missouri VocRehab is still running under the thumb of Ron Vestal and the approval of the governor and all other state governmental departments that might have a say in the matter.

How unfortunate for me that corruption fell right into my lap upon coming to China. In the far northwest–not as far as Xinjiang, where the corruption is of a different type altogether. This came by way of the director of Foreign Affairs not taking care of business: upkeep of housing. But there was also the keeping of my passport and residency permit. In actual fact, not just mine: all foreigners’. But my discovery that this practice, then fairly widespread in the country at 2^nd or 3^rd tier universities, was (is) illegal brought to light other issues. There is a kind of indentured slavery look to this practice, for without these documents, the foreigner is basically imprisoned. But the problem didn’t stop there: this man, who suffered from the US Senator disease–that is, if a lie is good enough why bother to tell the truth–also withheld my return trip ticket. The logic being that since all Chinese are suspect and crooked (as in, out for themselves alone), all foreigners are too. People being people.

I intended to sell the return portion of my ticket, for there was no reason for me to return to the States (even less reason now). What I found, however, was that I would not be given full price as full price had not been paid: there’d been some kind of specially arranged discount. Nevertheless, the full price was printed on the ticket and the receipts for the tickets were turned in to the bursar’s office for reimbursement to the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO). Standard procedure. But. . .the FAO director was getting full price reimbursement when he actually paid considerably less. . .on every foreigner’s ticket. The school did not know it was being scammed–until I told the VP. The ticket agent in Beijing was in on the deal and got his cut; a man in the Foreign Expert Office of the province was in on the deal and got his cut, as the university turned in their receipts to them for reimbursement.

I have another slight flaw: I try to right wrongs. Injustice gets my bile up, as it were. Perhaps this flaw is not so slight, as I tend to see injustice everywhere. Being demented, I of course believe it is everywhere. A man of my times, eh?

My computer was tampered with, documents were erased–including a 190 pp manuscript on my observations of China (not including any corruption)–and my phone was tapped. A helpful friend was bought off with threats to his business and family. My lawyer was pressured by the school via his uncle, the Dean of Education. And another foreigner, from another area school, was bought as informant (which took me awhile to grasp).

Everything, more or less, lost, I resigned based on the university’s breaking of the contract. At that point, I discovered that penalties for violation of contract only apply to foreigners; the universities simple don’t hold up their end of the bargain. What can a foreigner do? Somehow or other, I came away with about 1/3 of what I was owed. I moved on to a small, no-name college–the difference between college and university is crucial in China–for a three-year stint where I discovered the joy of incompetence.

Several years later, I learned that this same northwestern province university–it was only a college when I was there–had gotten rid of an internal thorn in the side in the Foreign Language School (that only taught English): the Vice-dean, Jin Qiao. A woman. A highly competent, no-nonsense kind of person, very outspoken. She was not liked by the FAO Director, who, at the end of his term, returned to the English faculty. Apparently, they’d been at each other’s throats for years. With the help of the Dean, a weasely man rather fearful of the old FAO Director (who once was the Dean), Jin Qiao was framed and divested of her position, continuing to live on in daily embarrassment and ignominy. The method was nefarious and seemed to me to be a throwback to the Cultural Revolution when any two-bit second-rater could gain fame and fortune by one means or another, both being rather insidious and absent of ethical concerns. That is, inhuman to the draconian.

While she was in Japan gaining further education in teaching methodology, a student was bribed to say that she had paid him to take an English proficiency test. Now, this kind of buying of people to take tests or, even, get the answers, is widely known and rather accepted behavior, at least by students. As I was close to this woman, working on a paper detailing the English mistakes in national testing materials, I knew that her English was quite good. There was no reason for her to take a proficiency test. . .and she couldn’t have while in Japan anyway. Nevertheless, the school administration fired her from her position while she was in Japan: she returned to disrespect and ridicule and no vice-deanship. The last I heard, she was shelving books in the library; by now, she’s retired.

Jin Qiao’s problem was not simply her outspoken temperament and no-nonsense manner of handling herself; her problem was competency. She was intensely competent.

At school #2, I spent a year and a half with the most competent foreign affairs person I’ve dealt with in my 6-7 years here. He simply did the job as he was told to: a characteristic of Chinese teachers. They do what they’re told and they’re put-upon, treated very much like slaves and not paid much better than indentured servants, by the administration and/or their deans. In actual fact, Robert Zhang was not getting paid at all for his work. He understood the foreign position. He worked hard to help us along. He took care of all problems when they arose so that his superiors never bothered and, therefore, never knew there were any. Of course, there was always one or another piddling problem in the apartments. As would be expected. Repairmen always taking care to do a not quite adequate job in the name of job security: they’d be sure to be called back.

The Vice-dean of Foreign Languages was also competent, a real mover and shaker. (This must be taken with a cultural pinch of salt, for in China a mover and shaker gets things done in a much longer, slower, round the block manner than in the West.) I got along well with this woman. Indeed, we were working on revamping the way certain reading courses were built and taught, a project that never saw the light of day, even five years later when the Dean of my present school asked for some curriculum writing.

Alternative methods is talked about without any real knowledge of methodology and then never put into practice. It’s not been done before. Precedence, under the rubric of tradition, being the ruling principle.

Unfortunately, Robert and the vice dean went off for Master’s work. Replacing Wang Lin as Vice-dean was a man of no note, commonly known by staff and students as “gong-gong,” the appellative given to the Eunuchs of the Imperial Court in prior days. A man with decision-making responsibilities, he would make none. True to his nickname, he would take any requests to the Dean, only telling the Dean the necessary information to get the answer he intended to give all along. I got along fairly well with the Dean and one day this came to light; his reversal, though, came too late. But he did nothing to alleviate gong-gong’s problem.

I have another slight flaw: I do not give respect to people who don’t deserve it, no matter their position. I start out giving them the benefit of the doubt and let them erode themselves. I’m not rude, mind you, I simply do not obey simply because they are authority figures. (It’s so hard not to get arrogant here, in discussing this.) This is as true in China as it is in America or Japan.

Gong-gong also side-swiped a study I was conducting, with the Dean’s approval, and begun under the tutelage of the Vice-dean, on the effects of dramatic textual analysis on reading comprehension in literature (drama not being literature). Drama, because there is so much unstated in the text but implicit in the dialogue and situation, and the symbolic-metaphoric nature of literature often show the same qualities. Gong-gong denied my request to copy the post-test. Another one bites the dust. Sometimes a gong-gong’s comprehension is as amiss as his genitalia.

It must be admitted here, though, that at Gong-gong’s appointment, the female members of the staff were quite vocal in their damnation of his appointment, noting there were far more competent women in the department who could have filled the position–and would, it was predicted, do a better job.

For Gong-gong, the only thing a foreigner was good for was teaching oral English. He told me to my face that a Chinese teacher could teach English writing better than a native speaker. That is, in this case, better than a Ph.D. and published writer and editor. Well, this is, after all, China. What do I know?

But the incompetence didn’t stop here. It reared an enticingly ugly head in foreign affairs later on. Although it had been arranged that I take up much of the slack of Robert Zhang’s absence, as I knew foreigner needs and problems in a new culture, it was nevertheless decided that perhaps the most incompetent individual I’ve ever met was put in this position. Most of what I was to do was help in hiring: reading CVs and making decisions, discovering true language ability, etc. I was to be paid for each new hire (I never was). Unfortunately, the real FAO director, the Dean of the College, saw fit to install his protégé, as he might be called, Gao Sen (foreign name Garçon, though he spelled it with an “s”). A little man of no attainment who misunderstood most all of the English that came his way, spoke torturously garbled English at best, got lost on his way home on the train, could not make arrangements for travel and had a rather demeaning, rude manner of questioning everything a foreigner might have to say. To wit:- there was a short in the heater to my shower such that whenever I showered, I was shocked. Sometimes this was quite violent. Garçon came by, looked at the heater, not accepting the word of the foreigner–after all, this is China–and said, “I see no problem.” I demanded it be fixed and, sure enough, it was discovered that water was leaking back into the unit and shorting out the wiring. I got along fine with the repairman: he’d been to the house before. We joked and laughed and he told me the design of the unit was faulty and I was lucky not to be fried to a crisp. But I paid for my insistent safety with a total lack of cooperation, harmony being only the other guy’s (i.e., my) business.

Garçon was far too intellectually ungifted to get into graduate school, so the Dean of the College called in a favor at a Shanghai maritime university, so that Garçon now has a Master’s in English with, to be kind, minimal abilities, perhaps at the level of a 2-3 year old native speaker. This is okay: it is usual in China to pass everyone who manages to get into college/university. No matter what. Once you’re in, you’re out. (More of this later.)

Two to three years later, upon visiting friends and setting up house for the summer in this little city, I discovered that all of the foreigners were beset by problems for which no one in the college would make even the slightest effort to take care of, resulting in the foreigners themselves having to pay for repairs and upkeep. In one instance, a family of four was left without shower/bathroom facilities for a month. As they finally paid for this to be remedied, the FAO, not hearing of any problem, believed there was none. However, the foreigners also deigned to ever complain, having learned–you might say–that this did no good. So, they kind of sank their own boat. . .as they might have if they’d complained: individual complainers are terminated from their jobs.

This school has since had trouble finding and keeping foreign teachers. The contract is full of language that tells the hiree what the school will do to them if they misbehave; nothing for good behavior or addition to the college. And foreigners talk.

Upon leaving the college, I ran up against monetary corruption in learning that the school paid in advance of the work done. That is, payday was on the 10^th of the month for the following month’s work. This meant that I was shorted a month’s salary from hire date. I pointed this out and would not bow down to pressure or authority. The Dean of the college bought off Robert Zhang, whom I blew off (we both realized his predicament) and, in the end, I got my salary. . .a few hundred more than I would have accepted due to a miscalculation on their part. I said nothing.

Authorities in China have a very difficult time with people who do not accept their say-so, their directives, without question; they cannot deal with people who stand up to their shenanigans, their–basically–abuse. The Chinese staff certainly don’t question: job security is not a concept here. And so the settlement was belabored and done in the name of placating someone who was totally out of order and definitely wrong. How magnanimous of them!

It was also at this college (now university) that I discovered the key to college education in China. That is, the “once in, you will graduate” mantra. There is no reason to work. There is no incentive. Even students who do nothing pass. Students who cannot follow directions simply whine to the Dean and their grade is upped. Passing is a mere 60 but, in practice, everything from 54-59 is reassigned the grade of 60 without student input. This is called saving face, numbers being important to funding and status, to hell with proficiency. Even a zero can be commuted. This teaches irresponsibility by abrogating responsible behavior to the trash bin. If you are never held responsible for your behavior, you never learn responsible behavior. . . and incompetence then becomes the mark of reward. That is, the incompetent rise to the top like cream in an old, non-homogenized bottle of milk. (Oh! Do I date myself with this simile!) The few who want to learn something and work hard complain of this–to the foreigner. And then suffer at the egregious hands of their schoolmates. Who wants a hard worker around to show them up–but they all want to go further with their studies!

Incompetence is further supported as higher grades mean better placement and more in the way of minor funding, called scholarships. Thus, cheating is big. There are businesses that supply answers to tests–or even people to take them for you. Students will pay other, more competent students to take their tests for them. Plagiarism is rampant under the aegis of “borrowing” and tradition–all the way through doctoral studies. That it has nothing to do with tradition rests in the scorn heaped on plagiarizers by Liu Xie and Confucius, to name but two honored ancients.

Garçon is the prime example of incompetence rewarded, followed by Gong-gong; but the list is long. At Lanzhou jiaotong daxue, the FAO Director only got anywhere through the old buddy system and connivance. He was fond of saying that he got his Master’s at the St. Andrews University, where the Royal family and other aristocratic British dignitaries go. His English was not so good, to be kind. The Dean of the College at Anyang shifan daxue, Garçon’s mentor, got his position via his father, who was a noted vice president. The Dean of the English School at Zhongshan daxue (aka Sun Yat-sen University), a top ten university, is a do-nothing man who maintains he is an expert in the Bible and an internationally known translator and taught at a school I attended. So frightened of failing, even in the slightest of ways, he does nothing. Everyone else does it for him. Thus, if they fail it is not his fault. Martin Ma Teng at #3 Middle School, Jiayuguan; though it must be admitted he was only incompetent in his position as foreign affairs personage, albeit his English was somewhat wanting. Hu Jia, FAO secretary at Hefei gongye daxue, incompetent to get up in the morning, only in her position due to her mother’s intervention. Deans and others who expect you to produce a new, never-before-designed course in two weeks with no computer.

Another flaw of mine is the inability to not name names. Unlike the Dalai Lama, who shies away from saying much of anything, I am a committed Buddhist, albeit known as a bad Buddhist, for I eat meat, drink alcohol and fornicate at every opportunity (not many, at 62). I spent 10 years as a social-political activist for the disability community–I’m disabled myself–and was quite good at it. Putting my well-being on the line was, as noted before, what led to my emigration to China. People need to know who it is who is lying and cheating and thieving and generally keeping them down. There is little difference now, in China, from that depicted in Shui hu zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh), a Ming dynasty satire set in the Song dynasty (11-13^th centuries). A few modern writers have had their hand slapped for saying similar things.

I cannot say, at this point, that my achievements have anything to do with my attitude and behavior. After all, I was considered too stupid to graduate from a 4-year college but I’ve got a Ph.D. And my writing and theatre were considered without merit; however, I’m published in two languages and three countries (that I know of), was a journalist, edited a literary journal, owned my own theatre and was the only foreigner ever to study at the National Puppet Theatre of Japan, a nationally protected historical treasure. My mentor, Andrew Tsubaki, is now a National Living Historical Treasure for his work in Noh theatre. This does not mean that I am necessarily any good, so you can see how competence is, then, not a high priority in my life, in my teaching. . .but I tell people anyway that it is.

But incompetence reigns in the lower regions of college-dom, for many teachers of English are near to monolingual. English is taught in Chinese, especially in lower and upper middle school. In the lower level colleges, it’s not much better. And the makers of tests of competence are mistaken in many, many ways–even unto university entrance exams. However, my study of this was rejected by an uppity, arrogant little Indian American academic editor as being no more than my opinion. Oh, surely not! Incompetence is somewhere else than in China!?

There are very nice language labs here but they are locked up except for assigned classes. No one can access them. Chinese teacher do not interact with students at all, so there is no way to gain more understanding, much less knowledge–even on the graduate level. As most of these teachers are kind of deficient in their Enlgish abilities, this is not surprising. However, this holds for every subject: the teachers go into the classroom, lecture and then leave again. All you have to do to pass is memorize a bunch of facts and spit them out at the end of the semester.

So. . .

There is a problem here, a conundrum perhaps, in that the government has sold a college education as the means to a better life, a higher paying job. . .and the people have bought it hook, line and sinker. Much as we Americans bought it in the 1950’s and 1960’s. But the quality of the college graduate remains questionable, all thought of work stopping at the entrance examination point. These exams are meant to fail people, though if you’ve gone to the right high school or gotten some kind of high priced coaching or know somebody, the qualification score is somewhat easier to attain. Grad school exams are even more elimination oriented, often only 1% of applicants being accepted. You can only apply to one top ten school, for if you fail at making the grade at one, none of the others will take you, regardless of your score (it is more difficult to get into Renmin daxue or Beida than it is to matriculate at Zhejiang daxue or Sun Yat-sen University), so that if you fail at Renmin daxue, even if your score is over the required minimum at Sun Yat-sen, you will be refused at the latter, setting you up for less of a good result upon graduation because you didn’t get a degree at a top flight school. Which isn’t saying you know so very much more.

There are three top flight schools–in the top 100–in Hefei, all within spitting distance of each other; I work at the least of the three and my students are comparable to the students I suffered through at Sun Yat-sen University. Some are even as arrogant and disrespectful; most are hard workers, very few at Sun Yat-sen were hard workers. (Caveat: I’m only really familiar with the English School of the Foreign Language College of these universities, though I have taught non-major graduate students.) Hard work pays off, of course, but it’s not necessary, so why do it?

Competition kills. It’s so intense that, though prospective students don’t commit suicide at not making the #1 school as in Japan, cheating is rampant in an attempt to insure they do make it–into any school. Once in a college, a great sigh of relief may be heaved, for the student will be graduated no matter what. Zippity doo-dah, zippity ay, my oh my what a wonderful day. Yeah. Everything going their way. And the marketplace is filled with ill-prepared, incompetent people; the universities are staffed with half- baked teachers. And one wonders why they cut corners?

There are always exceptions and these become my prize students, often questioning life and education, as they should, and thereby growing up. More often than not, they recognize the inadequacy of their education and seek study abroad. It’s difficult to make it on your merits with all of the favors and corruption going on around you. A college degree is supposed to help.

It’s a hoax.

The Making of Wu Youming

As promised, here is the first article about the educational world in China. As you will see, it has nothing to do with education per se; but it does have something to do with the kind of people who work in that bizarre little world: narrow-minded, petty, racist. This is my rendering of a particular vicious incidence of character assassination. It is in film (TV) format, though I also wrote it for theatre.

You will see that the characters are “letters”: there are no names but for the woman who was persecuted and ruined via rumor. Her name is Wu Youming吴有名, which could be read as Nobody Famous or The Famous Nobody (Wu being a family name that is homonomous with “nobody,” and youming meaning “famous”). It is pure and simple revenge on the part of L, M, G and C (though C is just a toady).

The irony is that by running her to ground, these character assassins actually made her famous, she wasn’t important enough to make a big deal over. The play/film was written about a year ago. I spent alot of time writing social satire, first in theatre 40 years ago, then in prose. I love Absurdism. I pull no punches.

Any filmmaker who would like to film this and show it, please do so. Anyone who wants the play script, please ask. So…The Making of Wu Youming.

 The Making of 吴有名 

Blank screen. 

White noise. 

Titles:

The Making of吴有名

Written by: James L. Secor

Directed by:

 

PLACE: A copse of trees. Idyllic. 

TIME: Dusk. 

                 ANGLE: From the side and behind 吴有名. Still camera. 

Silence. 

The only noise is that accompanying the action. 

A dirty street person (woman) shuffles into the scene. This is 吴有名. 

Ruffles her rags. Scratches her ass. 

As she makes her way into the trees. . . 

Voice Over: A formal, serious Master of Ceremonies voice telling the TV audience a secret. If he speaks too loudly, the old woman might hear him. 

                                                 Voice Over

This is 吴有名. That is not her real name. That has long been forgotten. 吴有名 is how she is known. During the bad times, everyone suffered. Perhaps the richer sorts more than the others. My father knew the man who ran the local tavern so I went to work. Workers came here and the out-of-sorts due to the bad times, the better sort and the pretenders. And吴有名. No one really knew who she was. She never said. Always, it was, “I’m just nobody. A figment of your imagination. Don’t even pay attention to me.” But everyone did.

“Hey, look! Nobody’s here!” would be the inevitable shout when 吴 showed up at the door.

Sometimes, she would growl back, “If I’m nobody, how can I be here?”

And everyone laughed.

吴有名 was the local joke. Downing her was a way to make everyone else feel better. The times, they were not good.

吴 never came into the tavern. She would sit on the jamb and call for her wine. It was my job to take her her wine. She had no job that anyone knew of. It was rumored, though, she’d once been a teacher. But she gave that up. No one knew why. Some of the patrons called her “professor” on account of her past life and because she would often talk about things no one understood. When she began, everyone would egg her on and tease her and laugh at her outpourings of gibberish– gibberish to them and to a 13-year old as well. Though I laughed with the others and did not understand much at all of what 吴 said, I nevertheless felt she was somehow–different. Under my skin, I knew she knew something the rest of us didn’t. Her eyes were more intense, less dry. They should have been empty because of her situation. She was more real to me than everybody else. How can I explain that? 

By this time, 吴有名 has disappeared into the woods. 

ANGLE: Hold still-camera and. . .

 IRIS IN TO SEPIA. 

IRIS OUT. 

PLACE: The bedroom of a house. Everything is white. Sparsely furnished. No windows. 

TIME: Mid-day, bright and sunny. 

ANGLE: From above and slightly off centre. 

                                                 Voice Over

This is a bedroom.                        

ANGLE: Camera pans around the room.

Stops at a clothes closet. 

                                                 Voice Over

This is a closet. It is dark in there. A small little room. Confining. It is a place for storing things. Usually clothes. But sometimes people live in closets. 

Suddenly, the closet door flies open. 

ANGLE: Close-up of a multitude of masks crowded together in the closet. 

                                                 Voice Over

And on the inside of the door is written. . . 

ANGLE: Slow pan around to sign on door. Fills TV screen. 

SIGN READS: No Exit. 

Pause. 

       ANGLE: Camera pulls away for a long shot of the closet with open door. 

But now there are only three men crushed into the closet, their masks staring out at the camera. 

ANGLE: Hold. 

                                                 Voice Over

It is a very narrow world in there. But it is all the world they’ve got. Centred on themselves, they like to impose their worldview on everyone outside, anyone who doesn’t fit with their closed belief of how things are. Anyone they think threatens them is ripe for a revaluing. 

The closet door slowly closes and latches itself shut. 

Banging around in the closet. 

SLOW FADE TO SEPIA AS. . . 

                                                 Voice Over

When the door’s closed too long, it begins to smell in there. 

BLACKOUT. 

LIGHTS UP. 

PLACE: An office. Typical office. But the desk is over-sized, as is the other furniture. The room is stark white. The furniture is brown, resembling piles of shit. 

TIME: Late afternoon. 

A short man sits behind the desk. He is almost lost. He wears a mask. The mask is of a well-groomed, debonnaire businessman. It is slightly too big for his head. This is Mr. L. 

Sitting on the sofa is a somewhat less formally dressed man, also in a mask that is too large for his head. He is taller than Mr. L. This man is smoking. When one cigarette is finished, he lights another. This is Mr. M. 

                                                 Mr. L

We have a problem. 

                                                 Mr. M

We do? 

                                                 L

We do. 

                                                 M

What is it? 

                                                 L

One of our staff is misbehaving. 

                                                 M

Oh, no! Not again! 

                                                 L

Different one. 

                                                 M

Oh? Who? 

                                                 L

Miss吴. 

                                                 M

Nice Miss吴? 

                                                 L

A wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

                                                 M

I knew it. I just knew it. 

                                                 L

Me too. 

                                                 M

They’re all really too much alike. 

                                                 L

So! (Stands) We must do something about it. 

Mr. L goes to the chair near the sofa and sits. 

                                                 L

Before things get out of hand. 

Mr. L lights a cigarette. L & M smoke awhile. 

As the scene progresses, the smoke haze grows thicker and thicker. They adjust by raising their voices til they are shouting at each other because they cannot see each other. 

                                                   M

What do you suggest we do? 

                                                   L

Find corroborating evidence.

                                                   M

You mean dig up more dirt? 

                                                   L

No, no. Digging up what’s been left behind. She’s obviously hiding something. 

                                                   M

Or she wouldn’t be here. 

                                                   L

Exactly. If she’s really who she says she is, she wouldn’t be in this backwater. 

                                                   M

Yes. Of course. It’s the way of the world. 

L & M smoke for a bit, contrapuntally. 

                                                   M

Why do they think we are so stupid we won’t see this? 

                                                   L

Racial prejudice. 

                                                   M

Ah. Yes. Always right. 

                                                   L

Superior. 

                                                   M

But we are not so stupid. 

                                                   L

No indeed not. We are very intelligent and insightful. 

                                                   M

We have a long history of intelligence and. . .stuff. Stuff like that. 

                                                   L

And so we find things out. 

Smoking continues. 

                                                   M

How do we do it? 

                                                   L

We’re missing something. 

                                                   M

Yes! We are! 

                                                   L

Let us take another look at her resume.

                                                    M

Yes. Let’s. 

Mr. L retrieves several sheets of paper from his desk, returns to chair, hands one piece of paper to Mr. M. 

They peruse the pages, holding them up against their noses. They grunt like pigs. 

They switch pages and repeat. 

They switch pages several times. 

                                                   M

I find nothing. 

                                                   L

Me neither. 

                                                   M

This must not be all.

                                                    L

Hiding something. 

                                                   M

As you say.

 Although L & M have been lighting up before, it is necessary that they light up now, filling the air with great beginning puffs of smoke. 

                                                   L

Ask for a complete resume.

                                                   M

Isn’t this it?

                                                   L

She’s obviously hiding something. 

                                                   M

Ahhhh. . .yes.

                                                   L

Then we will jump on her. 

                                                   M

How do you know she’ll do it? 

                                                   L

They’re all the same. What do they know about subtlety and cunning? We have a long history of language ambiguity and hiding our minds behind smiling eyes and gentle winning ways. 

                                                   M

Stupid to the point of ridiculousness. Easy pickings.

                                                   L

In the meantime, I’ll investigate her house. 

                                                   M

How will you do that? 

                                                   L

I have connections. 

                                                   M

Oh. Those guys. 

                                                   L

Yes. Those guys. 

                                                   M

We’re bound to find something, then. 

                                                   L

It’s inevitable.

FADE OUT. 

FADE UP. 

PLACE: A different office with the same furniture rearranged.

TIME: Late afternoon. A slant of sunlight slices through the room. 

Mr. G sits at his computer. He is doing nothing. He is about the same age as Mr. M.  

Mr. M appears at the open door and knocks. 

Mr. G turns in his chair. He is wearing a mask. Too big for him. A dapper, superior-looking mask as befits his nattily dressed figure. He is a smooth, controlled talker.

                                                   Mr. G

Yes? Come in. 

                                                   M

I’m Mr. M. 

                                                   G

Ahh! Mr. M. Welcome. Welcome. Come in. Come in. 

Mr. G goes to Mr. M and shakes his hand, guides him to the chair. 

Mr. G stands a moment looking down on Mr. M. Mr. M looks up to Mr. G 

Mr. G sits on sofa, far from Mr. M. 

                                                   G

I’m glad you could come. 

                                                   M

I’ve come about Miss吴. 

                                                   G

Yes. Yes. I remember her well. Caused quite a stir here. Upset the smooth running of everything. Even questioned me, of all people. Can you imagine? 

                                                   M

Yes. She is a problem.

                                                   G

Yes. I mean. . .who does she think she is? I’m the internationally known translator and Bible expert. 

                                                   M

And Dean.                                                    G

Yes, yes. Indeed. I am that. (Pause. Claps hands together) So! What can I do for you? 

                                                   M

It’s Miss吴. 

                                                   G

So you said. 

                                                   M

We want to know if she did anything similar down here to what she’s done up there. With us. 

                                                   G

And what might that be? 

                                                   M

It seems–(Coughs)–she likes little boys. 

                                                   G

Is that so? Well. . .oh, yes! I do recall something like that. Seduced– sexually abused a young boy student. Yes. Very terrible, sad thing. (Pause) Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for? 

                                                   M

Yes. Exactly. 

                                                   G

Glad to be of help. Will there be anything else?

                                                   M

Could we see the boy? 

                                                   G

Ah, no. I’m afraid not. He’s. . .not here, you know. So traumatized we had to send him home. We can’t have you disturbing the poor innocent.

                                                   M

No, no. Of course not. We would like you to come up and talk with Mr. L, my superior. And perhaps sign a statement. 

                                                   G

Ahhh. No. No. I can’t do that. No, no. Too many responsibilities down here. I’m the dean, you know. People rely on me. And there’s a great school event we’re involved in carrying off. Perhaps you saw the banners. . . 

                                                   M

No. I saw no banners. 

                                                   G

Well. . .perhaps they’ve not gotten them up–as they should. (Goes to window and looks out) You know how some workers are. Let me see. . .I’ll just make a note of that. . . (Scribbles on a scrap of paper) Anything else 

                                                   M

We are willing to make it worth your while. 

                                                   G

Well, now. . .let me check my calendar. . . 

Mr. G goes to computer and messes around a bit. 

Turns in chair. 

                                                   G

It looks like I could manage to sneak away for a day or two. I find I’m really not needed right away after all. My secretary can take care of things. Delightfully competent young lady. And quite alluring, too. 

Mr. G rubs his hands together. Licks his lips. 

BLACKOUT. 

                                                   G

(Voice in blackout) I’ll show you to best me! I’ll ruin you! I’ll stomp you into the ground. You. . .you. . . 

LIGHTS UP. 

PLACE: Mr. L’s office. 

TIME: Evening. Full moon visible out the window. 

Mr. L and Mr. M at door, having just seen Mr. G out.  

They look at each other. 

They offer each other a cigarette. 

They shake hands. 

Mr. L. and Mr. M go to sofa and chair and light up. 

                                                   M

Imagine. . .finding the filthy, dirty proof so easily. 

                                                   L

Yes. We are good. But you know. . . 

                                                   M

What?

                                                   L

She is so stupid to leave it lying around for all to see.

                                                   M

They are all so stupid. 

                                                   L

Especially to think that we are so stupid. 

                                                   M

That we would not find it. 

                                                   L

Luckily Mr. G was around and had a story to tell. 

                                                   M

Very convincing story, too.                                                  

                                                   L

Can you imagine even thinking you could get away with something so disgusting. 

                                                   M

I would never think of such a thing. Even with Miss C. 

                                                   L

Oh, yes. She is very. . . 

                                                   M

Delicious. 

                                                   L

Yes. Delicious. 

Phone rings. 

Mr. L goes to desk to answer it. 

                                                   L

Yah? . . . Oh? . . . Right out in the open? . . . How disgusting. . . . Eh? You’re kidding! . . . Oh. Thank you for keeping me posted, Miss C. (Hangs up. To Mr. M) That was Miss C. 

                                                   M

Ah. She is a good spy. 

                                                   L

Yes, she is. And Miss吴 does not know. She tells her everything and Miss C sifts through it for the truth she knows lies hidden in there. 

Mr. L and Mr. M laugh and puff their cigarettes. 

Mr. L returns to his chair, carrying his phone with him. 

                                                   M

What did Miss C say? 

                                                   L

Miss吴 hugs the boys in public. 

                                                   M

Oh. That is disgusting. 

                                                   L

In the school yard where everyone can see. 

                                                   M

I mean! 

                                                   L

She doesn’t even try to hide it. 

                                                   M

Miss C tells me they visit her house often on the weekends. 

                                                   L

Oh? She tells me it is only one boy. 

                                                   M

One boy? 

                                                   L

The public displays of affection are only cover for what happens in her house. Of course. 

                                                   M

How sneaky. 

                                                   L

Devious. 

Mr. L and Mr. M smoke. 

                                                   L

We found spots on the bed clothes. 

                                                   M

Really? Stiff white ones? 

                                                   L

Of course. I don’t think she washes her sheets. 

                                                   M

Likes to revel in the deed 

                                                   L

Yes. Disgusting. 

                                                   M

Who is the boy? 

                                                   L

Little N. 

                                                   M

How interesting. 

                                                   L

Yes. Isn’t it. 

                                                   M

You’d think he would know better. 

                                                   L

Oh, you know. . .boys today. It’s the only thing they think of. She just takes advantage of the situation. 

                                                   M

It must be the only thing she thinks of, too. 

                                                   L

Doubtless. 

                                                   M

Not like our day. 

                                                   L

Certainly not. 

Mr. L and Mr. M smoke. 

The phone rings. 

                                                   L

Yah? . . .Oh. Hi, sweet thing. . . . Hmm? . . .You must go away for another meeting? . . . I was so hoping you’d be around this weekend, I’m feeling particularly randy. . . . Yes, yes. I know. . . . Yes. I can fend for myself. I’m a big boy, you know. . . . Alright. ‘Bye, dear. (To Mr. M) That was my wife. 

                                                   M

Ah. Off on another business trip? 

                                                   L

Yes. So very many. 

                                                   M

There is a nice young girl at the massage parlor. 

                                                   L

Yes? 

                                                   M

Yes. Must be all of 14 or 15. Nice pert little breasts. No stretch marks. 

                                                   L

Yes? 

                                                   M

Yes. Cherry red nipples that stand right up. 

                                                   L

White skin? 

                                                   M

Like milk. 

                                                   L

Hair? 

                                                   M

Shaved. 

                                                   L

Ooh! How nice. 

                                                   M

She’ll do anything you ask. 

                                                   L

Really? 

                                                   M

Yes. And not so very expensive, all things considering. 

                                                   L

Pity she’s not a virgin. 

                                                   M

There are no more of them at that age. 

                                                   L

Not like the old days. 

                                                   M

Not like our wives. 

                                                   L

Yes. . .what has happened to the world? No more purity. 

Phone rings. 

                                                   L

Yah? . . . What?! (Jumps up) What? . . . What? . . . You’re kidding. . . . Damn! . . . Alright. You know who to talk to. (To Mr. M) She’s slipping through the net. 

                                                   M

What? How could she. 

                                                   L

I don’t know. We didn’t do anything to tip her off. 

                                                   M

No, no, no. But she’s so disgusting, it’s hard to talk to her. 

                                                   L

Yes. Or even be pleasant. 

Pause. 

                                                   M

How do you know? 

                                                   L

Miss C’s with her now. At the train depot. 

                                                   M

Damn! 

                                                   L

She was going to leave without telling us. 

                                                   M

That’s breaking the contract. 

                                                   L

She can’t do that. 

                                                   M

We can sue her. 

                                                   L

Yes. . .if we can keep track of her. 

                                                   M

What are you going to do? 

                                                   L

Plan B. 

                                                   M

Plan B? 

                                                   L

Always have a contingency plan, Mr. M. You must keep in mind that things do occasionally go wrong. So. . .Miss C is going to leak the truth to a few key people. We must do the same. 

                                                   M

But she might get away. 

                                                   L

I can take care of that. 

Mr. L and Mr. M stub out their cigarettes. Mr. M immediately lights another. 

Mr. M leaves. 

Mr. L picks up his phone.

SLOW SAD FADE TO BLACK. 

IRIS OUT. 

Sepia of opening shot. 

吴有名’s voice. Over the action. She has a scratchy, alto voice. 

                                                   吴有名

Some people look at life through a pirate’s spy glass and at the other end they see themselves. Their coping mechanism is putting everything into this universe’s orb. Behavior is, after all, what you see. (Snorts) To everything there is a reason. These people construct reasons for whatever disconnected bits and pieces they see and want to see in their spy glass. They commit murder. Kongzi said, Clever talk, a pretentious manner and a reverence that is only of the feet–Tso Ch’iu Ming was incapable of stooping to them, and I too could never stoop to them. (Scratches her ass. Farts) I don’t know. I just don’t know. Not any more. 

IRIS IN TO BLACK 

LIGHTS UP. 

PLACE: Mr. L’s office. 

TIME: Mid-day. Sun streams in through the window. Very, very bright. 

Mr. L is at his desk, on his phone.

                                                  L 

Yes, that’s right. . . . Yes. Well, you know. They are all pretty stupid. . . . Yes. Easy to pull the wool over their eyes. . . . Yes. String her along. . . . That’s right. And then dump her. . . . Yes, I know. It is disgusting. But what can we do, eh? It is our job as citizens to stop crime before it happens. . . . Ah. Yes. Well. How she escaped here is a mystery. But we have her now, yes? . . . What?! . . . She’s making friends with the girls?! . . . How utterly despicable! Boys and girls. . . . Yes. Be nice and keep your distance. . . . Alright. Thank you. (Ends call) Yes! We’ve got her! The foreign devil. 

Knock at door. 

                                                   L

Enter! 

Mr. M comes in holding newspapers. 

                                                   M

We have a problem. 

                                                   L

Solved. 

                                                   M

No. I don’t think so. Take a look at this. 

Mr. M hands papers to Mr. L. 

Mr. L. reads, exasperated. Reads another and another. Exasperation grows. 

                                                   M

She has made herself so public. 

                                                   L

This makes our job more difficult. 

Mr. L and Mr. M sit at sofa and chair and light up. They puff awhile. 

                                                   L

Those kinds of people cannot not leave a trail of slime. And she has the gall to do this! 

                                                   M

You mean like they are hooked? Like on drugs? 

                                                   L

Exactly. 

                                                   M

And when they are high, druggies do wild and crazy things. Everybody knows that. 

Mr. L and Mr. M puff on their cigarettes. 

                                                   L

I have spoken to the people down there. 

                                                   M

You have? 

                                                   L

Yes. Miss吴 is now into girls. 

                                                   M

What?! Oh, that’s horrible! 

                                                   L

Yes. It is. Insatiable filth. 

                                                   M

Does she do both together? 

                                                   L

What a. . .thought! 

Pause. 

                                                   M

Grime and shit. 

                                                   L

Soiled and dingy. 

Mr. L and Mr. M smoke in time with their epithets. 

                                                   M

Musty and messy. 

                                                   L

Sloppy and untidy. 

                                                   M

Foul and mucky. 

                                                   L

Rotten and putrid. 

                                                   M

Smutty and slimy. 

                                                   L

Come and juice! 

                                                   M

Tongues and fingers! 

                                                   L

Front door and back door! 

                                                   M

Sixty-nine! 

                                                   L & M

(Shout) Mouse eats little brother! 

Silence at fever pitch. 

                                                   M

I wouldn’t mind getting her. 

                                                   L

You filthy bastard. 

                                                   M

Wouldn’t you like to get her? 

Mr. L stands. Straightens clothes. 

                                                   M

You know what they say. .  

                                                   L

I’m a man. 

                                                   M

Me too. 

Mr. M lights another cigarette and sucks strongly on it. 

Mr. L goes to bookcases. Rummages around. Comes out with a bottle of champagne. 

                                                   L

I’ve been saving this. 

                                                   M

Good stuff, huh? 

                                                   L

Oh, my, yes. 

Mr. M gets out paper cups. 

Mr. L. goes to chair. 

They stand a moment. 

They take off their masks. 

ANGLE: Close-up of faces. 

Mr. L and Mr. M are truly disgusting looking. Their faces are distorted and almost inhuman-looking and spotted with greenish mold. 

                              ANGLE: Tight frame on Mr. L and Mr. M and champagne. 

Mr. L pops the cork. Foam billows out over bottle neck and hands. They laugh suggestively. 

Mr. L pours two paper cups full. They foam over. Mr. L and Mr. M laugh again. 

                                                   L

Another one bites the dust. 

                                                   M

Another one bites the dust. 

ANGLE: Pull away as Mr. L and Mr. M drink and laugh. 

MUSIC: Queen, “Another One Bites the Dust.” 

SLOW FADE TO SEPIA. 

Run credits.

 THE END

 

The Milking Business I

Clyde Moyen Bucket and Old MacGregor were sitting around drinking shots of Tequila at The Baron’s Roadside Inn when Edward Garcon sauntered in. He was licking his lips, though not because he liked dust, and twirling his Thoreau pencil.
“Well, how do, Mr. Bucket! And you, too, MacGregor,” he said, fanning himself with his sweat-stained slouch hat.
No one else in town had a slouch hat, nor did they want one, such dysutilitarian fashion not being a high priority out on the Brazos River Basin where Eastern newspapers were still two days old despite the Brownwood Stage making a daily pass-through. Out-running Indians was considerably easier if the stage was lighter of load. It wasn’t considered good form to toss out a passenger or two, though it was amazing that anyone managed to hang on given the speed of the stagecoach and the deteriorated condition of the roadway from Waco since it had become the Yabu Carriageway, cowboys having more pressing things to attend to than road repair.
“What d’ya thinka this heat, eh? Hot enough to fry an armadilla.” Garcon was always ready with a colorful phrase, whether he made it up or not.
Clyde and MacGregor looked up.
“‘Lo, Garcon,” said MacGregor, throwing back another shot.
“Ain’t no news here, boy,” snorted Clyde.
“I didn’t come for news. I came to git outa the heat. Worst wave we’ve had since. . .well, gosh! I just can’t recall.” Garcon sat and called out, “Baron! A tall glass o’ lemonade–and go easy on the sugar.”
The Baron emerged from the dark recesses of the shop. He clunked his way to Garcon’s table and glared down at the little man.
“Just where th’hell’m I gonna git the water, Garcon? You notice how dry it is lately?”
“Sure do. My lips are chipped and cracked like the Yabu Causeway. I been thinkin’ ’bout writin’ a editorial ’bout it. All the cracks done dried up and spread out like canyons and the rivers are trickles, small threads o’ runnin’ mud.”
“It’s been like this fer a month, Garcon, and the Causeway been a crack in the cosmic egg fer longer. So what? When you think yo’re thinkin’ gonna be finished?” asked Old MacGregor.
“I dunno. Sometimes the ideas just don’t wanna come. So,” and he turned to The Baron, “What do you suggest I imbibe?”
“We got whiskey, whiskey and whiskey. They got the Tequila and vodka ain’t been imported yet.”
“Oh. Well. I think I’ll have a whiskey.”
“Good choice,” said The Baron and trudged back into the darkness.
“I swear,” said Garcon, “with no drinkin’ water, what th’hell kids’r gonna drink? It ain’t legal to give ‘em alcohol.”
“Let ‘em drink milk,” spat Clyde. “I ain’t got no use for kids. Fuckin’ pain in the ass. I’d love to leave ‘em all behind.”
“Mama’s milk don’t last past a year or so, Mr. Bucket.”
“Let ‘em suck on a witch’s tit for all I care.”
“Or a cow’s tit,” softly scorned Old MacGregor.
Clyde grabbed Old MacGregor’s wrist. “What’d you say?”
“I said, let ‘em suck on a cow’s tit.”
“Now. . .that’s some idea. How many cows you got?”
“What th’hell’s it matter? Big boys don’t drink milk.”
“What do they drink?”
“Not much of anything in this drought.”
“Yeah. And you got how many cows?”
“Not many. Maybe a hunderd head. Why?”
“That ain’t enough.”
“Well, hell. It’s yore pokes drive ‘em up to Wichita for slaughter.”
“Well, now,” ruminated Clyde, “the times they are a changin’.”
“Oh, yeah. How deep that thought is!”
“Mac. . .Yabu’n I got enough beef cattle during season. . .”
“Yeah?”
“Why not turn your herd into a milkin’ farm?”
“Yo’re shittin’ me! Who the hell’s gonna drink that crap?”
“Thirsty people. Specially kids.”
“Huh?”
“An’ it’s more healthy than water, ain’t it?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Baby cows drink it and they grow up big and strong.”
“So?”
“And mom can give it over and git out an’ help in this death-defying drought.”
“Nobody ain’t done it before and ain’t nobody wanna go drinkin’ cow milk.”
“But we could make ‘em.”
“At gunpoint.”
“Nope. We gotta create a need.”
“Create a need?”
“Half the need’s here, yeah?” Old MacGregor nodded. “And Garcon’s lookin’ fer a story, ain’t he?”
“A hunderd head ain’t enough. ‘Sides, almost everyone out here’s got a cow.”
“Cows ain’t such good workers as bull.”
“Yew got that right!”
“How much bull you got?”
“Too damn many.”
“If you was to trade, how many cows could you get for a bull?”
“You want me to trade my bull for cows?”
“What if you owned all the cows in Chokepointe Piste?”
“I’d be poor as shit.”
“Sometimes, Mac, you are so dense I think yo’re name’s Rube Sordes. Garcon!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I got a story for ya.”
“Hot damn!”
“You know anything about milk?”
“No. But I got a encyclerpejia in the office and a hist’ry o’ the world from Noah to the beginning of the 19th century.”
“I want you to git to readin’ and start producing articles and stories and adverts for milk. How nutritious it is and how cheap and how it’ll relieve the severity of the drought. Think you can do that?”
“No problem. But it costs for adverts. Who’s gonna pay?”
“MacGregor’s Golden Udders.”
“Never heard of ‘em. They new in town?”
“Yep,” said Clyde, taking a hit of Tequila. “They just rode in. I know the owner. I’ll git you some info on ‘em.”
“I shore appreciate it, Mr. Bucket.”
“Here’s $25. That enough to git you started?”
“Shore thing!” Garcon pocketed the windfall.
“There’s more where that came from. Now. Off you git and do your research and writin’. We’ll see somethin’ tomorrow, right?”
“That’s awful tight, Mr. Bucket. . .”
“Just you remember who’s payin’ you, boy. Now. . .I’ll have The Baron bring you whiskey and ribs and if you git me a nice article about milk by tomorrow, I’ll have Yellamama send over a girl.”
“Just once?”
“No, no. You’ll be doin’ lots o’writin’.”
“Two or three times a week?”
“Hell, Garcon! Maybe one o’ them girls might marry you.”
“Whoa! I’m outa here!”
Clyde and Old MacGregor watched Garcon scamper on down the street.
“Sometimes it’s so easy it isn’t worth it,” Clyde growled.
“I ain’t so easy, Clyde. . .”
“Once you got all the cows, you won’t have a thing to worry about.”
“‘Ceptin’ fer breedin’. I won’t have no bull.”
“Keep about four.”
“Well. . .I don’t know. . .”
“Come on. We gotta register the company.”
And that was the start of the milking business and MacGregor’s Golden Udders. Making the best of a bad situation. By the time the mindless masses realized they’d been fleeced, it would be too late to do anything about it. The kids would be hooked, Garcon would be hooked and the admen would be producing propaganda about as fast as a cow could be milked. Yes, sir! The drought was not sucking the life out of Bucket and MacGregor any more. They were making the hard times work for themselves.
The bull worked hard, too, though the parched earth did not cooperate by producing much in the way of food crops. Before things got so bad that the owners turned to eating their bull, milk had taken off. The Golden Udders’ good fortune was helped along by a mysterious bovine flu that killed off all the cows in the Brazos River Basin but those at Old MacGregor’s farm. That’s because, as Garcon, editor of The Yabu Yeoman, discovered, Old MacGregor had begun grain feeding his cattle. They grew big and strong and produced more than enough milk, which is how the Golden Udders brand became the byword for health and fitness throughout East Texas. The problem was the natural grass: it turned out to be bad for bovine.
But, as the drought passed, milk stopped being the cheap all-in-one food it was originally advertised as. The people had to go without. That was not only unhealthy, it was a cultural set-back: milk had become a status symbol–if your kids weren’t drinking milk, you were a bad mother. Wasn’t important either that some kids came down with tuberculosis and spent the rest of their short lives coughing and gagging and spitting up blood and spreading the disease so that adults came down with it.
After moaning and groaning amongst themselves, a select group of townsmen set their complaint before Hellecchino, who said, as he always did, “I’ll see what I can do.” And just in time, too, with the decrease in population. Nobody had heard of Louie Pasture, so the Bible Thumpers began preaching The End Times and nobody wanted to die.
So it was that Hellecchino just happened to saunter by one of the out-pastures at Old MacGregor’s farm. And there just so happened to be a cow in that pasture, probably a spent milker since all of the other cows had had their natural nutrition co-opted by the less nutritious, less tasty, less fortified but far more expensive though hyped as less expensive grain. Any real farmer would have known that grass, that grows without any stimulant and at no cost, is cheaper, but old MacGregor was a monopoly and with monopolies anything goes. Besides, more cost to produce means higher prices on the market which means great profit and so all’s well with the world, as Shakespeare maintained a mere 300 years ago.
Also in the field was a persimmon tree and a cowherd. Not a cowboy, a cowherd. Everyone needs employment, even the incompetent. And there was no one more interested in employment of this kind than Yabu, Bucket and old MacGregor. Ee-eye, ee-eye O.
“Hey! Cowherd!” shouted Hellecchino, leaning on the fence rail.
“Hey,” answered the cowherd.
“That’s sure a fine persimmon tree you got there.”
“Is it?”
“Sure is. I’m a connoisseur of persimmons.”
The cowherd was not from these parts.
“Y’are?”
“Shore thang. I travel the country lookin’ for persimmons and this is a prime tree.”
“Ya don’t say!”
“Yep. What say you get me down some so I can taste the delicacy of the moment.”
“I ain’t much fer climbin’. . .”
“Me neither. I got a gimp leg.” Hellecchino shook a loose leg at the cowherd.
“We got ourselves a problem.”
“Do appear we do. But. . .you could get that there cow to butt the tree and bring some fruit down.”
“Way-all. . .I guess so. She ain’t good for much else but watchin’.”
So the cowherd lined the cow up with the tree and swatted her hind-quarters a good one. The cow banged into the tree. Cows’ll do just about anything.
No effect.
So the cowherd did it again.
No effect.
“Third time lucky,” said Hellecchino, knowing just about everybody believed in superstition.
So the cowherd did it again. And, lo and behold, persimmons rained down. Hellecchino smiled.
But the cow was stuck, horns embedded in the tree trunk.
“Way-all. . .I’ll be gall-darned,” said the cowherd, scratching his head. “There’s your persimmons. I’ll be off to unstick the cow.”
And off he ran.
And off Hellecchino ran–to fetch his friends and their pails.
It wasn’t long before that cow was milked dry and Hellecchino was smiling. It didn’t matter that he had to spend time picking up the green persimmons and tossing them aside. He’d all but done his job. Next was extricating the cow and putting her to good use.
So Hellecchino banged on the tree and banged on the tree until the protesting cow was free. And the cow was grateful, as Aesop showed us millennia ago would be the case, wolves not withstanding.
The next day, the cowherd and several of the boys returned to solve the problem only to find they had a greater problem. Being the loyal followers they were, they lit out down the road in search of their missing bovine. Hellecchino left a good trail to follow, though, in fact the cow had gone the other direction. Hellecchino was a crafty hero, as heroes go.
It wasn’t long before the boys came upon a street walker. That is, a prostitute out for a more lucrative business. Hellecchino was sitting down by the side of the road on a little folding stool. A little ways off, behind a mulberry bush, a colorful Mexican horse blanket was spread on the ground. He wasn’t a very good looking prostitute, either, but that’s of no consequence to cowboys. As the sound of approaching hooves grew louder, he began knitting, whispering stitches to himself, “Drop one, pearl two.” When they drew nigh, they stopped in a cloud of dust. Hellecchino coughed prettily and waved his row of knitting at the dirt and grime.
“You seem a pretty wench. Whatcha doin’ out here all by yo’self?” said the lead Carambolero.
“Looking for a poke. How’s about yourself, handsome?”
“We’re chasin’ a varmint.”
“That sure wouldn’t be me, would it?” Hellecchino looked up at the cowboys with big eyes and blinked.
“No, ma’am. It shore wouldn’t.”
“Well. . .that’s nice.” Hellecchino put his knitting down and spread his legs beneath his gingham dress, propping his elbows on his knees.
They all sat around awhile, the cowboys fidgeting in their saddles, Hellecchino looking casually from one to the other. Hellecchino could be very charming when he wanted.
“Say,” one of the cowpokes finally said. “You seen a cow lately?”
“Oh, my. I sure have. But what do you want with a cow when I’m here? My cunt’s a whole lot tighter and virus free. . .and I’ll suck your udder as a bonus.” And Hellecchino giggled, hiding his face behind his hand.
“We’re–” cough, “looking for that cow.”
“You boys spend alot of time in the saddle, I dare say,” remarked Hellecchino archly, steering them away from the matter at hand.
“You got that right, honey.”
“Can you take the time from your task at hand for a fuck?”
“Hell, woman! We’re always ready to get fucked.”
“Well. . .I don’t like doing it in a crowd,” and Hellecchiono looked down demurely between his open skirted legs. “So let me hop up on your horse and you can ride me to my shack. When you’ve been fucked, we’ll come again for another horny cowpoke. Sound like a good idea? It’ll be the best fucking of your life. I’ve a terrible itch a-going.”
“Alright, boys. You wait right here. Hop up here, honey.”
As Hellecchino mounted, he let out a fart.
“You got any more gas in ya, I’ll pound it out, make no mistake about it.”
“That wasn’t a fart. That was the saddle creaking.”
And when Hellecchino was up, “Come on, you upright cowpoke. Let me hold you close.” He threw his arms around the man, clamping one hand over each breast and pushing his stuffed bosom against his back. “Bound me for a warm-up, cowboy!”
The unlikely pair cantered on down the road and around the bend to where there was a mud hole and a bunch of townies, out of work carpenters and builders. That sort.
“Here we are, sweetheart.”
Hellecchino jumped down and pulled the Carambolero after him, divesting him of his pistol. Hellecchino pulled off his wig. The townies pushed in about the pair.
“You’re finished riding this horse, boy. It’s mine now. And now for the screw job I promised you. Strip!”
With a group of brawny men around, the Carambolero didn’t hesitate. When he stood nude, Hellecchino started laughing. The Chokepointe Piste roughnecks guffawed.
“You expected to fuck me with that little worm? Go on and climb into that mud pit. You smell. The bath’ll do you good.” The man did as he was bid. “Deeper, sweet thing, and if it ain’t deep enough duck down. Tha-aaat’s right. Now. . .we’re gonna leave your clothes and pistolee right here if. . .if you promise to tell Clyde Moyen Bucket”–Hellecchino pronounced his name incorrectly–”just how you been treated. Every detail. Courtesy of Hellecchino, hero.”
Hellecchino and the townies walked off, leaving their chastened chaser wallowing in his shame.
The cow was never recovered.