It wasn't the worst Thanksgiving ever

You know what's funny? I have, on more than one occasion, had Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving. Then I move to China, and it's turkey-and-stuffing all the way.


Well, fried chicken was as close as we could get, actually. We were going to go with KFC for an extra dollop of Americana, but scrapped that plan after an unfortunate scouting mission last week that I swear included my first encounter with dog meat. (I don't want to talk about it. I just want to forget.)

There was cranberry sauce and genuine Stovetop stuffing, kindly schlepped from the States by our program director, who was making her annual rounds of all the China posts. Beth mashed up some potatoes, and I trekked to the import store for a can of pumpkin puree, which we baked into one helluva delicious pumpkin pie in the toaster oven with a crust of crumbled crackers that we usually eat with our coffee.

There was also salsa and guacamole, because our intrepid program director also smuggled us a few avocados, bless her heart. You haven't lived until you've had salsa on mashed potatoes.

Lucy and Star came over to help us celebrate, highly entertained by our stories of birds so big they barely fit in the oven, and were downright intoxicated by the utterly foreign taste of avocados.

So, you know I avoid the schmaltz like cancer, but I think my defenses have been weakened by a week's worth of listening to my students' "What I'm grateful for" speeches, and maybe just a little sprinkling of homesickness ... In any case, here's what I'm thankful for:

That I haven't been hauled off to a Chinese labor camp (yet). That the mercury finally cracked 40F today. That I can still watch American TV, thanks to the witchcraft of the Internets and China's ultra-relaxed attitude toward copyright. Also: That my family still puts up with me. That I have a solid handful of friends who stuck with me through some bad times, and a growing handful of friends to share the (hopefully) better times to come.

A divine profession: Engineer of the soul

Well, I could wax eloquent about how bloody frickin cold it is -- (On the four-minute walk to class this morning, for instance, the snot actually froze inside my nose) -- but instead I will share some uplifting excerpts from my students' essays on their future goals:

"Dream is a ship, it can bring me to successful bank; dream is a mental power, it can promote me to be an excellent girl ... Teacher, what a great career! Even though I can't get much salary, I still think it is very meaningful ... As the word saying,'Teacher is the engineer of the soul.'" - Allison

"Dream, this is a big word! I feeling it's very trouble. Everyone has a dream, but many people's dreams don't come true ... Please don't have many dreams, because this is a pain. Dream is a source for pain." - Jack

"I want to be a good woman in my family. I want to make my family happy. This is my dream. So simple and so difficult." - Christina

"When I was a child, my dream is become a teacher ... As time went by, my dream has changed. I want make more money, in order to support my family and pay for my college tuition fee. Money is so important for me that I have to own much money." - Jessica

"I want to be a soldier, not only it an protect my motherland, but also it give me a strong power to strive for my goal." - Sally

"I have a dream that I'm always young ... I don't have to worry about the old age during which I even can't take care of myself. I know that my dream will not come true. However, I think it is lucky that I'm young now." - Mandy

"Well, I want been a teacher. It can help many people to learn knowledge. It a divine profession. I want change the world myself. I know it so bad. But I want to try. No illiterate in the world. This is my dream." - Derek

"Society is not like my image, it is not very beautiful, it is full of dangerous. Today, my dream is graduation can be very successful and I can find a good job to repay my parents." - Vickey

"I want to be a leader of government ... I can earn much money, and I can buy a big house and a beautiful car ... I also hope I can play computer game forever." - Lincoln

"I believe my life will be wonderful with my head. Also, I didn't have the clear goal. So. The dream is vague. It's bad?" - Agatha

Ode to an ex-roommate

Forecast for Sunday night: 0 degrees

First hair cut in China = disaster

We took Star with us to the salon to ward off potential mullets, but apparently there was some confusion between "shorter" and "short," and somehow I ended up with Jim Carrey's bangs from "Dumb and Dumber." It's taken a beer and two and a half chocolate bars to recover my sense of humor.

Otherwise, it was a highly entertaining outing. The stylists - two young men with the Asian bouffants that all the truly hip kids sport here - were all kinds of intrigued by us. First of all, they wanted to know, if both Beth and I were from America, why wasn't our hair the same color? (Star explained this one by saying that Beth was a "mixed-blood," hence the dark hair.)

Even better was when my stylist called half the salon over to peer at my scalp. "He says you have some white hairs," Star explained. "But I don't think so. They must be blonde." Love that girl. Sigh. Yes, it's true: China is giving me gray hair.

Big, fat cheaters!

First big test today = disaster.

Though I had been warned that students in this country view tests as a legitimate opportunity for group work, I was still taken aback by the rampant cheating.

I explained very clearly that there was to be no talking, no looking at other people's papers, no cheating whatsoever. I made them spread out and put away all their books; they professed to be shocked and wounded by my mistrust. I gave out two versions of the test; they were downright resentful of the implications (or at the impediment to collaboration, more likely).

And then the whispering began! It wasn't even high-tech cheating -- right in front of me, with no shame whatsoever, if they didn't know the answer, they just asked their neighbor! "No talking!" I said furiously, about 432 times. Some of them smiled apologetically, others looked annoyed and rolled their eyes, but all of them merely waited until I'd turned my back to chastise the next miscreant to start comparing answers again.

These are college kids, for crying out loud!

But, as I mentioned before, cheating is so common in Chinese universities, the students almost seem surprised that I object to it. The Christian Science Monitor had a good article about the subject:

Beijing - Three professors at a leading Chinese university – including one of the country's top experts in traditional medicine – have lost their jobs in a new plagiarism scandal. And the government finally seems to have been jolted into tackling the academic dishonesty that plagues many faculties here.

Experts are not holding their breath, though. In a culture where knockoffs are normal, from sportswear to DVDs, it will not be easy to expunge deep-rooted academic habits, they warn. But some say hope may lie with a new generation of internationally trained teachers ... (more)

And whether its really a consequence of China's lax approach to copyright issues, or another offshoot of the Communist "all for one, one for all" credo, I'm certainly not the only teacher plagued by cheating. Down in Yushu, Brendan has declared all out war on the little scammers, with mixed results:

Cheating continues to be a large issue. Fed up with failing quiz grades, I have decided to make students who earn less than 80 percent on a quiz retake it. The two words my students are most afraid to hear in my class are “zai kao.” Unfortunately, this led to a veritable orgy of cheating during the retake. They literally attempted everything in the book. One of my students tried to get out of the retaking by erasing the grade I have given him, a 38.5, and writing in “41.5.” Note to self – do not grade quizzes in pencil... I laughed at him and said, “zai kao.” The students also embedded the answers within a bunch of Tibetan script that they had written on the chalkboard, thinking I would not notice it. I did. Some of the students wrote the answers on the paper that covers their desks, hidden within designs. I tore these off. They also hid copies of the quiz on various parts of their person. I collected them all. One student even tried writing on his hand. I watched him read off his hand during the entire quiz, collected the quiz, then asked him to show me his hand. He tried to cover up everything but his fingertips with his sleeve. I crumpled up his quiz and said, “zai kao.” . . .