-
Back to the Future: My First Lesson in Cognitive Dissonance
North central Pennsylvania is beautiful and temperate this time of year. The day reveals a land of maze-like mountain ranges, each ridge roughly the same elevation. Geologists describe this kind of rugged terrain as a desiccated plateau. Here there are ridges beyond ridges lush with forest, waterways, bogs, valleys with farms, corn fields and cattle pens; and the sky blue with castles and archipelagos of cumulus. At night the sky glitters sharply with stars while arches the diaphanous ribbon of the Milky Way.  The weather this time of year is almost always temperate and mostly sunny, except for occasional storm sweeping through, flashing here and there with electric yellow bolts,…
-
Getting Settled in the City of Perpetual Gloom
A green-eyed monster was here. I knew it when another foreign teacher complimented Sarah, a post-doc student assigned to help me transition to life in one of China’s largest cities, the City of Perpetual Gloom. To me, the green-eyed monster was a minotaur which shook its head furiously and threw its horns to either side. They were big horns too. The kind that would pierce, rip, and crush if they ever connected with your heart. “Wow, your English is very good,†the other teacher said. Ingratiation oozed from his pores. He was one of those nice guys. He reminded me of myself, actually. Maybe that’s why I wanted to smack…
-
A Portrait of the Teacher by a Young Student
A student from my underground literature class wrote an article about her experience with my teaching method. I had been helping the student develop her writing skills so that she could perform well on the GREs as her dream is to go to graduate school on edge of the prairie in Garrison Keillor Country — a place I had fond memories of from a journey I took in a former life. What follows is an article she wrote about my class for a Minneapolis/St. Paul based e-zine called China Insight. In the article, she recalls the first day I introduced myself to the class. Her perspective can be compared with…
-
Where I Come From
A Chinese student, a talented English major from a university in Hunan, China, asked me to describe my hometown. This is what I wrote: Smethport is very different from Chenzhou. It is like a dream that I’m afraid will seem unreal or too abstract for you to realize. Words alone are not enough to describe the beauty, wonder, and charm of my home town. But I will try. Right now it is a very special time of the year in which we celebrate the birth of our country, the Declaration of Independence and like your country, a revolution against Imperial tyranny. Now the weather is much like Kunming in the…
-
Going Back to China
I rolled through an intersection without stopping. I pounded, tapped, blasted, and played the car horn like a motherfucking riot. And wherever I went pedestrians and motorists alike trembled in fear. America is a diverse country. That was something I had missed while teaching in Hunan last year. I had missed the Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, hipsters, Goths, jocks, blacks, whites, yellows, reds, gays, conservatives, liberals, independents, blondes, brunettes, etc., etc. Everybody was fiercely self-expressive. But when I drove in the traditional Hunanese Driving Style, I got to see the one thing they all had in common: In a flash their facial muscles flexed, pupils dilated, white teeth showed, and…
-
Teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four in Mao Country
Every Wednesday evening six Chinese girls came to my apartment. By the middle of the Spring 2010 term at Xiangnan University in the home province of Uncle Mao and General Tso, I had come to depend on them to keep me happy. They were junior English majors and picked English names like Tina, Victoria, Christie, Helen, Cherries, Emilia, and Emma. Without their attention, kindness, and passion, I surely would have gone crazy as is so much the fate of many foreigners who come to China looking for love or a new life. But I am getting ahead of myself. It was a dismal cold day in March when I met…