Places of Xiangyang: Li Gong Campus

I know Ligong is not as classically pretty as Longzhong is, and I’m sure you won’t agree with my view even if you see the pictures, but I still really like the campus. Because it’s new and maybe only 50% of it (or maybe even less) is actually completed, it’s very open and quiet and peaceful. It’s cool to see a university in its early stages. There’s this one area that eventually will be a large pond with a bridge spanning across it, and it’s not very pretty, but all these shrubs have grown up in it and some murky water fills part of the bottom of it. It’s interesting to look at, and one day I was looking out the window and I saw two cows (that looked kind of like water buffalos from the shape of their horns) were chilling out in the pond, eating the shrubs. On one of the cows had a crane sitting on top of it, but I wasn’t able to get a picture of it before it flew off of him.

Also, apart from the open campus, there are a lot of perks to weigh out the negatives for us four teachers that work at Ligong. Of course, they give us free bus rides to and from the campus, so to me it really feels much more like we’re at work…rather than still students at a college. The other teachers just wake up and walk to class whenever they have it, and we can’t do that. Also, most of the class buildings aren’t completed yet, and one of the classrooms I have to teach in hasn’t finished its ground floor. We have to walk along a tile path that runs through the dirt ground when we first enter the building, and then I go upstairs to teach. I’m not certain they have heating systems set up and so I’m thinking it’s going to be a cold winter. However, they give us a 200 kuai stipend each month to spend at the cafeteria and certain stores on campus. I have found a way to take full advantage of the 200 kuai so that I’m buying necessities that I won’t have to pay out of pocket to get elsewhere. It really does save a ton of money, so I’m loving it. Just as a note: today I just bought a slice of cheesecake on my card so really I just got a slice of yummy cherry cheesecake for free. #WIN. Also, in both Longzhong and Ligong, they assign each of us foreign teachers with a Chinese co-teacher who can speak English…so that these teachers can convey to us any information we need to know from the school, or if we need any help with anything. From what I’ve been told by the teachers at Longzhong, the co-teachers there have rarely spoken with the foreign teachers if ever. But here at Ligong, our co-teachers generally have a pretty close relationship with us and they keep us pretty informed. I’m not going to lie though, I definitely got the best co-teacher. I have an advantage with the Ligong co-teachers because I speak Chinese, and they prefer to speak Chinese if they have a choice…so I’ve developed a good rapport with all of them and know what they’re about. But my co-teacher is definitely the best…as soon as she receives information, she contacts me so I’m always the first foreign teacher to receive info from Ligong. In addition, we’ve become friends and so we’ve eaten lunch together a few times and we’ve hung out together outside of the campus as well. She’s really great, and we have a mutual appreciation for film! Her name is Xixi (pronounced “shee-shee”).  (More about my escapades with Xi-xi another time.)

Anyway, for me the last benefit from teaching at Ligong is this (though at the same time it can be a negative as well): distance from the students. When I go home, it’s nice because I’m able to walk outside and not have to worry about running into my students. Don’t get me wrong, I love my students and all but they have a tendency to not want to leave the foreign teachers alone. Their wish is to be best friends with the foreign teachers, but that really can’t happen because it’s important to establish a line between teacher and student. Unfortunately,  a common thing you’ll see in many Chinese colleges is that the maturity of the students is that of middle school students. This really is a product of the cultural rules and societal expectations around them. For example, dating is not just frowned upon but forbidden until college. If you’re dating and the teachers in high school find out about it, they’ll call your parents. In addition, the development of personality maturity is not a priority growing up in China…the main priority is memorizing a ton of knowledge.

This idea of rote memorization has a history of hundreds of years, in which Chinese citizens would attempt to take a highly intense imperial exam each year. If you obtained a certain level of achievement on these exams, you would be awarded a government position of some level: sometimes it would be as a leader in your town, sometimes it would be as an official in the court of the emperor (if you achieved the highest levels). People would study from a very young age and then for the rest of their lives just to try and get a high level on the test. You’d sit in a small room similar to a cubicle and for THREE DAYS you’d take the test. Some people couldn’t make it, and they’d pass out and have to be carried out of the area. (It makes the SAT look like a little quiz.) The test was based on rote memorization of history, philosophy, and many other things. The questions they asked you required you to recite back what you had memorized for years and if you didn’t know it, there was no trying to B.S. your way around it. And there were no essay questions where they’d give you a topic for you to write on, this was not a test that was interested in what you thought about things…it was not interested in how creative your mind could be. This mentality has lasted even to the modern era: China today.

So there are a lot of cultural differences that I have to deal with when teaching my students here, and one BIG thing that I have to remember not to do is to end up preaching my own personal Western views as fact to them. In the beginning of the term, when my assistant boss was giving us a demonstration of what to expect in a Chinese classroom and how to deal with it, it was very clear to me that he had a tendency to preach his own Western views as fact to his students. For example, he mentioned to us that the Chinese revere Mao Zedong, when in fact “he really was a monster”. This is a very Western and fundamentally untrue belief, because yes Mao did a lot of pretty horrible stuff, but he did it for the sake of making his country better…WHICH I’M NOT CONDONING, but I am ABSOLUTELY saying that every country in the world has leaders that their citizens revere that have done EXACTLY the same thing. I mean, let’s just say our founding fathers have a few skeletons in their closet too…but we respect them and honor them because we owe a lot to them (else we wouldn’t be American citizens).

Another thing that I’m trying not to spread is the American Dream…this Western (shall I say American) mentality that if you just work hard (and just believe<3<3) then you can achieve anything, you can do whatever you want. It’s not something that’s even true in America, and it’s definitely a mentality that most of the time you can’t have in China. I’ve told several Chinese friends I’ve run into that I want to make movies in the future. They say they admire my bravery and they wish they were brave enough to achieve their dreams too. I can’t be stupid and tell them, “Oh, you can! You just have to believe in yourself!” So what I do tell them is this: “I know that in this society it would be very hard to break away from what’s expected of you to do what you want…but maybe if you research and look for different ways to achieve it, you can at least find a way to do both what’s expected and what you may want to do.” One friend wanted to be a volunteer, I told her that you can get a job and still do volunteer work. Another friend wanted to be a singer, I told her that if you practice your singing and look around the city, there are plenty of opportunities where you can sing as a part time job on the side of your normal job. It’s not the American dream, where you get filthy rich and famous, but they can achieve satisfaction and happiness. Okay, I’m ranting now. All in all, I really do love my students and I respect their cultural differences while trying to teach them things that could help them (I teach them new things without telling them that their culture is wrong…I think my assistant boss has to work on that).

Ultimately, I really do prefer teaching here at Ligong, and not having to remain at Longzhong the whole time. I feel like I’ve actually done something with my day when I get on the bus and travel across the city to the campus. Not to mention, getting away makes life here feel much freer. I’m not confined to one place all the time.

Here are some pics:

That building with the unfinished roof is Building 1, one of the buildings that I'm teaching in. But this is the good building. Only the roof is unfinished, everything else is done.

This one is the building next to Building 4 (I teach in Building 4, which is to the left not in this picture). As you can see, there's a whole lot of work to do here. Building 4 is only a little better...it's got more of its windows put in.

This is the library, not even close to being done. Only the outside is finished, the inside is still wood and dirt.

This is the cow I found. The white speck to the right is the crane that used to be on the cow's back.

These are two of the other American teachers that teach at Ligong.

The unfinished bridge. Now they've put some railing up, I'll take a picture of that when I get the chance.

I took this picture out the window of the 3rd floor of the cafeteria. As you can see, beyond the Ligong borders is just farmland and nature...so pretty! I love how rural this place is.

A closer look at Building 1.