Teaching Begins

I have so far delayed providing a post about teaching here at Nanjing University. Well, with one week behind me, I thought you might be interested in some early impressions.

Despite having heard a great deal from colleagues who have taught here before, and despite having visited the university previously and having met faculty and some students, I was nevertheless uncertain about what to expect—of myself and of my students. I had decided that, rather than choose a course from materials I had taught often and knew well (say, something on Russian history), I would teach a subject that I was presently very interested in, but had not taught much.

This choice had implications both positive and negative. On the one hand, I surmised that most young Chinese today are not so very interested in things Russian, so perhaps a topic of more general interest would have more appeal. Because short-courses like mine bear no credit or grade, and depend entirely upon the willingness of students to experiment with them, I might hope that a course with so broad a subject might attract a reasonable audience. On the other hand, by choosing to teach a course that I had never really taught previously, I obliged myself to work on generating that course, including considerable effort before we left Grinnell, when I might experiment with available materials, create some graphics for power point slides, and so on. Inasmuch as I did not have many other constraints on my time last fall and winter, this was not a big problem, but it did mean that I had less instant familiarity with course materials than I otherwise might have. A bigger issue, perhaps, concerned how well I might succeed in teaching some rather difficult issues to students who would have to absorb these issues through a language that was not their native language. The jury is still out on this last matter, but my experience of the first week makes me hopeful.

Upon arrival, I learned that, although I would be teaching twice a week as planned, it would take a somewhat different format than I had anticipated: Tuesday's class would be three hours and Friday's two hours (rather than the twice-a-week 90-minute classes I had imagined). My Nanjing colleagues assured me that I could alter this arrangement as seemed desirable, so, I tried not to fret about it as I readied myself for the first class.  Meantime, my host in the Nanjing University Department of History (Liu Cheng) assured me that my classrooms (different rooms for the two days) would both be digitally-equipped so that I could use Powerpoint presentations (something I had long determined would be important to helping students absorb points I was making in verbal form).  In addition, my colleague assigned a graduate student (Yang Yongzhen, a young man from Shantong Province) to me, both to take care of various classroom details (computer setup, photocopies, etc.), and to help Jill and me get to know a bit of Nanjing.

The main Nanjing University campus (there are three campuses, including the third, now under construction) is divided into two main parts. Most residences (including ours and student dormitories), the student center, student cafeterias, and other student services occupy space south of Hankou Lu, which, something like 8th Avenue in Grinnell, bisects the campus.  North of Hankou Lu are the academic buildings (and the historical center of the campus that I wrote about in an earlier post). A very attractive, wide lane, shaded by ranks of trees, including long lines of plane (sycamore) trees, points to the north, at the head of which one finds what my colleagues told me is the Teaching Building. It's hard to make out from this photograph which reveals only the doorway, but the Teaching Building is a massive, institutional-looking structure whose designers seem not to have indulged too much imagination in its creation.  My teaching room could have passed for a university room of a certain vintage at any American university: the walls were painted an indistinct, institutional shade; there was a green chalkboard, 40 or 50 chairs, and a row of large windows opening to the south. The front of the room featured a presentation desk where I could connect my Mac to the overhead projector, and the desk itself sat atop a concrete slab raised about a foot above the floor of the room—a design clearly intended for lecturing and minimal student-teacher interaction.

But none of this was a surprise; from what I had learned from previous Grinnell visitors, something like this arrangement was common at Nanjing, and I had prepared myself to lecture every day if it came to that. I had heard that Chinese students are often reluctant to engage in discussion, especially in English, afraid perhaps of mistakes that might make them seem foolish. Nevertheless, although I certainly enjoy lecturing and think that at least sometimes I'm not too bad at it, I thought that I might try to encourage a more interactive exchange. So, as an introduction to myself and the class, I had prepared a brief Powerpoint introduction that would tell them something about me, about Iowa, and about Grinnell College. That the college had so few students, that the town of Grinnell had so few people, indeed, that the entire state of Iowa had only about half as many people as lived in the city of Nanjing alone—all this proved interesting (not to say amusing) to the twenty-five or so students who appeared in class (along with two colleagues from the Department of History).

In addition to photos of the main campus buildings—academic as well as residential—I spent some time discussing how education at such a college might differ in method from some other colleges, and to that end spent a few minutes discussing the college's Mission Statement. I tried to make the point that encouraging intellectual clarity and polite criticism required practice, and that the classroom was an excellent place to try out these skills, often in interaction with the instructor. I warned them that I would ask them questions—and expect replies—but that I certainly understood that they would be speaking in a foreign language—for my benefit—and that they should try to overcome any anxiety or nervousness they might feel.   Furthermore, I tried to emphasize that the course we were embarking on was, I understood, not an easy one to appreciate even in one's native language, so that they were likely to encounter here not only new words but perhaps also some new concepts.

Although I did not use the entire three hours at my disposal, I was satisfied that I had introduced them to some of the main ideas I hoped to teach about, and that, so far as I could tell, they seemed to have followed me. Professor Liu, who quickly inventoried students afterward, confirmed that they had followed me well, but that they would like some readings to help them prepare.

I already had in mind a brief piece that I wanted them to read, so I was glad for their willingness to take on some additional work. In the meantime, I asked them to prepare a comment or question for Friday's class—any comment or question, I stressed.  On Fridays we will be meeting in a room better suited for discussion, so I wanted them to come to class prepared with a few words in English as a way of helping smooth the transition to discussion.  And it didn't go too badly—but I'll write more about that in my next post. Now I have to make sure that I'm ready for this week's lecture!

In China, it's already February 26—My Mother's Birthday

Some of you will know that over the last few years I've spent considerable effort trying to retrieve my own and Jill's family history. Last year's sojourn in Sweden, for example, included several stops from which Jill's Swedish ancestors had set sail for new lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Before we went to Sweden, I had made several trips to Ukraine in search of my mother's origins, and although I there found records for her parents' wedding and her father's birth and christening, I have not yet succeeded in locating the record of my mother's birth and christening.  I know only that when she and her parents arrived in New York at the very end of October 1912, she was apparently less than one year old. Because her mother never got further than describing the state of the moon at the time of her birth, my mother adopted a birthday—February 26, 1912.  In fact, this date might have been her real birthday because the 1912 parish  records that I consulted in Ukraine had been damaged, leaving only parts of January and February intact. Perhaps her name had appeared in those sections now lost to us.

Anyway, it occurs to me that, had my mother lived this long, today she would be celebrating her 99th birthday. She succeeded in living only about two-thirds that life-span, however, succumbing to cancer in 1978 just as Jill and I prepared to return to Moscow for a research leave. Although we did not spend any time in Ukraine that year (as we had in 1975 in a first attempt to discover family ancestors), I thought about my mother a lot that fall, and not only because I continued to experience the pain of having lost her. There was, I thought, a certain irony that I should be back in the land from which she had come (in 1912, of course, there was no "Ukraine" as such, these lands having been absorbed into the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century) in the very year that she had died in America, the land to which her parents had transported her in 1912. My mother never understood why I became interested in Russian history, and feared that my spending time in what was then the USSR would not prove healthy for me or Jill. Despite a certain curiosity about family who might still be alive in the USSR, and despite the fact that her parents never really mastered English so that my mother always spoke with them in something that might best be called RussPol-ish, my mother thought of herself as fully American and did not really sympathize with the idea of being "Russian."

Looking back on what I know and remember of her life, I wonder about all this. I wonder, for example, what my dad's family—100% fair-haired Germans (my dad's eyes I remember as being spectacularly blue)—thought about his marrying this dark-haired, brown-eyed, Slavic beauty (their posed wedding picture makes a remarkable impact on the viewer). My dad's mother was dead long before I was born, but my dad's dad lived to be 84, and he owned a large farm adjacent to the one my dad had purchased as a young man and where he farmed for much of his life. But my memory—fallible, of course, and further hindered by the fact that I was the youngest of my parents' children, so that I experienced far fewer family interactions than did my siblings—cannot summon a single time when my dad's dad came to visit at our house. Nor can I recall a time when we all went over to my grandfather's (by this time, of course, he was a widower, living with his youngest daughter and her family). Perhaps I have simply forgotten, but I can't help but wonder whether my dad's choice of a partner hadn't been well-received in his very German family. Or maybe there were other factors at work that had nothing to do with my mom's origins.

Anyway, as I remember what would have been my mother's 99th birthday, I am aware that today I am far from the land in which she was born and also far from the land in which she was buried. To attend our own son's wedding, Jill and I have crossed yet another ocean; despite the multiple connections, our journey, long as it was, constituted just a fraction of her long jaunt from rural Ukraine to America (the boat trip from Rotterdam to New York took more than a week) to attend our own son's wedding in China. Sadly, my mother died before either of our children was born, so she never saw them, never knew them.  Nevertheless, in a sense my mother—at least that part of her genes that I helped transmit to Andrew and that part of her love and affection that helped make me into his father—has also crossed another ocean. The grandson of the little girl born in a tiny village in rural west Ukraine, the grandson who himself was born in a small town in rural Iowa in the US Midwest, has come to China where he has married—in a small village in rural China.

Compared to many of today's world citizens, of course, such a transition is small potatoes. But today I find myself wondering what sort of conversation my mother and I might have about this subject were she still here.

Home Away from Home

I am sorry to have been so obsessed with other subjects that I have forgotten to write about some of the most basic parts of daily life for Jill and me here in Nanjing. 

Those of you who have been here before will know that most of the Grinnell faculty who teach at Nanjing, just like the university's other academic visitors, are lodged at the Foreign Experts' Building, a university guesthouse close to the university's southern gate on Guanzhou Street. The main part of the building boasts four floors, whereas a wing toward the west has three.  I am not sure how many rooms there are altogether, in part because we pass very few of them enroute to our place, room 101 on the ground floor of the main building. As you can see, the room has two large and comfortable beds, a desk and chair (where I sit now as I type these words), two chairs by the window (each chair big enough to serve as a loveseat, I would think), a couple of cupboards, a TV, and two large closets. The private bath is large, and features a tub/shower as well as a western-style toilet (in case you were wondering...).

The windows look out on a small yard or courtyard where some bushes remain in leaf and some less hardy plant life is now again coming to life. Jill has taken special pleasure in attending to the birds who have frequented this space, but we have also noticed that some folk have also used the area for hanging out wash or airing out bed clothes.

The good weather we have been enjoying of late—sunny and warm—has encouraged everyone to get their washing done and give their duvets a good airing. One day Jill was out with her camera and captured some of the color and texture as reflected against a large dormitory quite near us.

But the good weather has also spurred the university's gardeners into action. We have noticed deliveries around campus of various potted plants, including a rather fetching array of kale, cycad palm, and a boxwood-like bush on the steps of a restaurant across the lane from our building. And, as I may have mentioned before, we have seen around campus signs that some of the earliest blooming bushes have begun to push out their flowers, hopeful that the worst of winter is behind them.  Well, we can hope. Jill noticed that the guidebooks report that each year in late February and early March Nanjing hosts an International Plum Blossom Festival out at Purple Mountain, one of the most visited sites in the Nanjing area. So we are definitely in the mood for some early spring!

Buildings and history...

Well, as you will have gathered from the previous post, we are now pretty well settled in Nanjing, and aware of how quickly time is passing. I have taught my first class, and, as I like to say, at least no one threw any tomatoes! But I'll write more about that another time.

Today I want to turn to an avocational interest of mine, architecture. Anyone who comes to urban China today can't help but be impressed by all the building. The Beijing Olympics represented perhaps the apex of Chinese money in search of world-class architects, with some stunning results (if also some widespread destruction of Beijing's built past). Nanjing, too, is undergoing rapid change as big money acquires and rebuilds old city blocks. Nanjing University is also taking part in the building boom, now in the process of building its third (and newest) campus.

The home campus, where Jill and I are headquartered, represents in its buildings much of twentieth-century China, and not always to the benefit of the campus appearance. Now more than 100 years old, Nanjing University inevitably reflects the complicated history that gave the world today's China.

One page of that history has interested me for some time--namely, the connection between the original university campus and the Chicago architectural firm of Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton.  Students of America's Prairie School architecture will know that Dwight Perkins was a first-cousin of Marion Mahoney Griffin, spouse and partner to Walter Burley Griffin, whose Ricker House on Broad Street is one of Grinnell's finest buildings. And it was Dwight Perkins who in 1913, just when the Griffins were moving to Australia where they hoped to design the new capital, Canberra, recommended Griffin to the University of Illinois as Chair of the Department of Architecture.

What may be less-well known is that Perkins's colleague, William K. Fellows (1870-1948), was apparently the main architect for a whole collection of buildings at Nanjing University.  Perkins, Fellows & Hamilton in fact designed many schools, principally in the US Midwest, so it is hardly surprising that the firm should also have designed a university. But exactly how they came to design Nanjing's university is not clear—at least not yet to me, although I hope to improve on my ignorance while I am here.  But an article in the January 28, 1925 issue of The American Architect reports that "Through the recent activity of Mr. J. E. Williams, of the University of Nanking, money was given toward the building and endowment of a greater university" (58).  Among the donors was Mrs. Cyrus McCormick of Chicago (who endowed the first four dormitories), a Mr. Swasey of Cleveland (Science Building), Mr Severance (administration building), and a Mr. Day (chapel).  A the time of this article's publication, more construction was anticipated for yet another science building and a hospital group.

According to the article, the architects visited China so as to "familiarize themselves with the materials used and the methods of construction employed and also with the architectural features of the country." The new buildings were constructed over "old and deserted grave land on the outskirts of the city," and represented what the authors describe as an "acropolis" rising above the lower-lying land south of the new complex.

What strikes the eye of a prairie school enthusiast is the way in which so many features of that architecture meld with designs intended to be Chinese.  All the main buildings were made from brick, "not the small familiar brick of commerce," reports The American Architect, "but brick taken from the old wall of the Manchu city, made hundreds of years ago and some with inscriptions of a former generation. These brick are 4 x 8 x 16 inches in size and weigh about fifty pounds apiece" (64). The trim was made from white marble, still quite resilient now almost a century later. Roofs were all tiled, and ornamented with cornices intended to evoke more typical Chinese designs.  Nevertheless, in numerous details—including the window muntins, the design of door decorations, and even—as on the chapel—the long ribbons of window so often found in Prairie School buildings.

The dormitories apparently formed a set of quads to the west. To judge from the original plan, several of these buildings disappeared when the athletic fields and gymnasium were built. But today one can still enjoy a very pleasant quadrangle that originally served as dormitories but today houses various other offices and departments. These buildings relied upon brick of more conventional dimensions (and origins, one presumes), but retained many of the same design features.

There is much more one might say about all this, and I promise that, if I manage to learn more about these buildings, I will try to restrain my blog enthusiasm on this score.  Still, the buildings—recently very carefully repaired and repainted, no doubt for the university's centennial—reflect an earlier form of cooperation between the US Midwest and the University.

What's to see in China? ...Did you say "IKEA?"

Yeah, I know. China, land of thousands of years of history, land of remarkable beauty, numerous world-class museums...and where did we go on Saturday?  To IKEA, like many thousands of Chinese, it turns out.  I admit that I've been to IKEA in the US several times, and I've seen IKEA in Russia, Hungary, and other places, but I was curious about how the IKEA phenomenon played out in today's China.  After all, when I first saw China in 1982, there were way more bicycles than cars, and the consequences of the Cultural Revolution were still palpable everywhere.  But today's China is a different place, especially for people of a certain age, education, and, most importantly, income, and nowhere better illustrates this reality than IKEA.  Here in Nanjing, as with IKEA everywhere, I guess, the store is situated out some distance, bumping up now against other big box stores.  And, as in Chicago's IKEA, for instance, there is a huge parking lot and lots of cars.  And, as in all IKEA stores, one can find countless attractive and (usually) low-priced items of consumption; indeed, surveying the items for sale, it would be hard to notice any difference from any IKEA store—every item labeled in Swedish, as elsewhere, but here also labeled in Chinese.

All IKEA stores attract crowds, but until I visited the Nanjing IKEA I really had no appreciation for the meaning of "crowd."  The store was crammed with people, for the most part young, well-dressed couples, often with a child (sometimes even two) in tow. As in all IKEA stores, they were toting those ample yellow bags suitable for filling with lots of stuff; more ambitious buyers had shopping carts they were filling, and filling their bags and carts they certainly were! As their buying habits suggested and as their clothing generally confirmed, these were the young Chinese who were benefiting from the changes of the last two decades. Unlike their un- or under-employed peers, these people have a stake in the system.

I have thought about all this quite a bit of late, especially in light of the instability now apparent elsewhere in the world over the last few weeks. Although a recent piece in the New York Times indicated an awareness in China of a potential carry-over from the turbulence evident throughout the Middle East,  it is hard to visualize this threat among the throngs of young Chinese we saw at IKEA; for them things here seem to be just fine. Of course, it is impossible to know how broadly this satisfaction extends, and far from all young Chinese can afford to shop at IKEA (or buy the car to get them there).  But for a generation born not only after the Cultural Revolution but even after Tienamen, it may well be stuff that determines the future of China.

Guilin

All the guidebooks report that the area around Guilin has long been spoiled by its popularity with tourists, and it is hard to dispute this contention.  Tourists are everywhere, and there are nearly as many hawkers trying to sell postcards, tours, bicycle rides, and much else.  So there is that--people trying to make a living out of the tourist trade.

But the landscape, seemingly perforated by enormous limestone karsts long ago pushed violently upward by geologic pressures, inspires wonder and explains why so many tourists have been drawn here. The Li Jiang, the principal river in the district, now seems a slight force of nature—a broad but  mostly dry, rocky channel—but at one time the river helped carve out the landscape that confronts today's tourists. And tourists there are in abundance! Some travel the river in small skiffs fashioned from a dozen or so large bamboo poles fastened next to one another and capped at the ends (often with pieces of automobile tires) to keep the river's water out; perhaps four or six chairs sit on the deck with a small covering overhead;  at the rear sits the single boatman operating a very small outboard motor that gently propels the craft forward, the river's water gently washing over the deck. Modern variations of this boat depend not upon bamboo but upon a dozen PCV tubes, often capped not with automobile tires but with PCV caps such as your household plumber might stock. Some larger craft navigate the river, too, but the channel is neither deep nor wide, so all the boats must accommodate themselves to this reality.

No matter how you view the jagged landscape around Guilin, the impression is powerful. Andrew,  Xian Na, Jill and I signed up for an all-day tour that began with a bus ride out of town, visiting several spots along the way where we might sample the different shapes of Guilin's geology. Being so far south, Guilin enjoys a milder climate than northern China, so we noticed that many forms of plant life  prospered here even in February.  For example, Jill had noticed on the plane trees that lined one of the downtown streets that ferns were freely growing along the bark, and we saw palms, cycads, birds' nest ferns, and much else that will not grow outdoors further north. More impressive still was an enormous banyan tree we encountered at one of our stops. According to the posted sign, experts estimated the tree to be about 1100 years old, its various spreading branches held upright by a network of younger stems.

After lunch we all entered a cave that opened up within one of these enormous rocky thrusts.  Riding part of the way in a sort of canoe, then later walking through a network of pathways and stairs, we enjoyed the illumined topography—hollowed out caves, tall stalagmites, dangling, undulated stalactites—generated by the mineral-rich waters that had long made their way through this limestone.  Sadly, the way out of the cave led through an intricately-designed, one-way path that passed absolutely every conceivable salable memoir of the adventure! But the cave trip made it possible to think about the interiors of these monstrous projections that lined the horizon all around us.

Of course, one need not travel far to enjoy Guilin. In an effort to recover a bit from all the excitement of the wedding and travel, the four of us got a late start one morning, and used the day to explore Elephant Trunk Hill (it seems that all the hills have been given names intended to reflect their appearance) situated right in town, but rising sharply above the Li Jiang. We also strolled along the lake by our hotel, decorated with a pagoda now serving as a tea house.

And on our last day we enjoyed a sunny stroll through Quixing Park on the city's east side. The breeze was a bit stiff, but the sun brought out families and it was fun to watch little kids chasing after wind-blown bubbles, or running wildly after one another with parents or grandparents close at hand. In such a scene it was impossible to miss those basic joys and ambitions that unite all persons, no matter where they live.

Wedding--the Guests

By now you must be tired of reading about the wedding, now almost a week old. But I thought I would add one more post to say something about the guests. As I wrote earlier, even before the wedding began a series of seats had been placed adjacent to the red carpet for the kids to occupy, giving them unobstructed views; everyone else crowded in behind, catching as much of the action as they could.  As the photo shows, quite a few kids attended, but perhaps none so cute and excited as Chen Yue, a niece, I guess you could say, of Xian Na, and her little friend, both of whom accompanied us on a walk up the nearby hill where they collected some flowers for the bride. During the ceremony, too, Chen Yue stayed close to the action, and enjoyed checking out the digital photos I was trying to take of the ceremony. But she was far from the youngest to attend, as several babies arrived, saddled onto their mothers' backs in a wrapped, warm basket.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum were some older locals who arrived to attend yet another in what must have been a lifetime of village weddings.

Of course, there were visitors in attendance, too.  Several of Xian Na's classmates from Chongqing Technical University (who also were once students of Andrew's at the University) came and helped, and Aaron, the master of ceremonies, had long been a friend and colleague of Andrew's at Chongqing Technical University.

And then too, there were the parents, who here posed with the bride and groom, nicely illustrating how the wedding brought together two families. Next to me is Tang Xiao Min, Xian Na's mother, and next to Jill is Xian Na's father, Xian Si Zhong.

OK, I'll give it a rest. The wedding was a wonderful time, but in my next post I'll move on to tell you how we spent a few days relaxing around Guilin in southern China.

Wedding, Part 3

When I was a boy, all the weddings at our church were community affairs: the "receptions," as they called them, always took place in the basement of the church, and the women of the church did all the cooking, baking, and cleaning up.  I never thought much about it then, but I have come to learn that in many cultures of the world weddings have similarly been community affairs. In these places--like Russia, for instance--weddings were celebrated not so much for the bride and groom as they were for their parents, all their kin, and neighbors. A wedding meant that sometime soon the community might expect new additions, and this prospect was important for everyone.  Consequently, Russian weddings might stretch out over three days, and featured numerous feasts with the bride's and groom's families. And, as with all feasts, someone had to prepare all the food! I thought about all these things as I observed preparations for the wedding of Xian Na and Andrew.

When we arrived at Xian Na's house the day before the wedding, preparations were already well underway. I can't remember all the preparations, but the photos here will point to a few moments in the process. You will notice that here, too, women did most of the work--some trimming and chopping the meats, some the bamboo shoots and vegetables, some preparing the rice.  Men were present although, except for setting up the dozen or so tables (where they soon situated themselves to play cards or mahjong), men did not do much of the actual preparation--at least so far as I could see.

With all this preparation, the obvious follow-up was to eat, and eat we all did! The main meal the day before the wedding was quite delicious, though perhaps somewhat less special than the next day's meal. Guests enjoyed a half-dozen dishes at each table along with generous portions of rice (check out the size of that rice steamer!). The guests, of course, were not limited to the wedding party or their families, but everyone in the neighborhood! Because the Spring Festival was still officially underway, many villagers, who had moved elsewhere or had left the village to work elsewhere, were home for the holiday, so there were many mouths to feed.

Each of the dozen tables accommodated about eight persons, so each "shift" fed almost 100 people. On the day of the wedding, the first "shift" went to those who had attended the ceremony, and the tables groaned with a variety of foods, generally richer and "meatier" than the previous day's meal.  For instance, each table received a fish that had been fried whole, then basted with spicy sauce; there were roasted pork thighs, plates of marinated beef and sliced sausage, a special bamboo shoot soup and another in which a kind of turnip was boiled along with leafy greens (and of course, rice).  During the meal, men and women brought a seemingly endless line of dishes out to the tables where women were posted to make sure that every table received the full menu.

While all this was going on, additional guests were arriving, waiting by the gate for the next shift to be fed.  And before long, the first guests finished their meals, arose and departed; immediately someone arrived to clean off the dishes, remove the old plastic table covering, and get ready for yet another sitting. Meanwhile, a detachment of helpers set up shop outside the gate: one would scrape the remains of dirty dishes into buckets; another would wash the dishes; yet another would wash the chopsticks, etc.  Soon more guests were being fed, more arrivals were waiting at the gate, and so on. At least three full "shifts" were fed before the wedding party sat down for its dinner. A circle of those who remained gathered around, doubtless curious to see the foreigners up close and see how they dealt with their chopsticks!

So, in addition to the festive wedding, in addition to the civic act by which the state recognized the marriage, a generous community meal helped celebrate and make official the community's recognition of yet another married couple.