Like most foreigners, my worst “China rage” moments occur on the subway. The Guangzhou Metro is actually one of the most modern and efficient underground systems in the world, but the sheer number of people that ride it at any given time is overwhelming. In theory, there is a system in place to keep things orderly: blue arrows indicate where you should wait in line to board the train, orange arrows show where you shouldn’t stand because that is where people will be disembarking. Simple, right? Yet without fail there are people who ignore the arrows and stand in the wrong spot, ignoring the fact that EVERY other person is waiting behind the blue arrows, and they stare at their cell phones acting is if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a line they are cutting. I hate those people with a fiery foreigner passion that could power the nation. As soon as the train arrives, any semblance of a line at the blue arrows disintegrates as people decide that they aren’t ok with the other people getting an unfair advantage after all, so they too go stand directly in the way of the stream of people who should be exiting the train. What follows is an indescribable tornado of pushing, shoving, chaos, old ladies elbowing, anarchy, crying children, self-immolation. Ok…I’m getting carried away, it’s not that bad, but it still sucks.
What doesn’t suck is Chinese advertising on the subway. Hmm, maybe I should rephrase that. Chinese advertising is so ridiculously over-the-top bad that it actually comes full circle to successfully mesmerize me every time. I’ve blogged about this before but let’s take, for example, this popular Pepsi advertisement seen across the city right now.
Holy shit, these people are losing their fucking minds over that Pepsi. The Chinese text in that Pepsi firework literally translates to: “Right now…good food…Pepsi.” That’s all it says. Based on that text I can only conclude that they are just so pumped up about the fish heads, shrimp and Pepsi feast that they are about to consume that they had to let loose a primal scream. Also, look at the guy on the right sitting down and how giant his head is compared to his tiny baby hand. These are the things I think about to distract me from the metro chaos.
Advertisement #2: McDonalds’ Double Sausage Diarrhea Burger*
- *legal disclaimer: not real title of menu item
This is my interpretation of the McDonald’s China team’s syllogistic train of thought as they devised this burgerdogmonster.
1) McDonald’s = American Fast Food Chain
2) American Fast Food = Hamburgers and Hotdogs
3) Therefore Next McDonald’s Menu Item = Double Sausage Diarrhea Burger
(Step 4 = Profit)
Christmas and New Years in Guangzhou
As the western holiday season rolled its way once again through China I decided to base some of my lessons around Christmas and New Years. After all, English teaching 101 is engaging student interests, and Chinese teenagers are extremely interested in American popular culture. For Christmas I challenged the high school students to hold a debate about whether or not the holiday should be nationally recognized in China. Almost every student felt that it should be a holiday, but when I made some take the opposition side they came up with a great reason why it shouldn’t be celebrated. Semi-direct quote: “Today in China, if an old person falls down, often it is a scam and they will demand money from the person who helps them up saying they knocked the old person over. Christmas shouldn’t be a holiday in China because if Santa Clause came to China and fell over no one would help him up.”
That debate seemed a bit heavy for the middle school students so I devised a Mad Libs game where they wrote a letter to Santa Clause, inserting random nouns and adjectives to make it funny. I was amazed that without me actually telling them to do so, the students immediately realized the hilarity of using their classmates’ names whenever possible, and choosing nouns such as “toilet” and adjectives like “smelly” and “dead” are always funny. When it was time to read their letters to the class, the students were laughing so hard they had to pass the paper in a circle with their groupmates just to get through reading it. One memorable line that literally knocked a boy out of his seat from laughter was, “Santa, if you bring me all of the toilets I asked for I promise to eat all of my English textbooks.” The universal hilarity of poop jokes in the middle school classroom is a true xmas miracle.
New Years (called Western New Years in Asia, as compared to Chinese New Year which is in February) is a surprisingly big deal in Guangzhou. On December 30th my school held its annual New Years show. This is a major production, with student groups preparing the whole semester, and a number of dance and song competitions leading up to the show with the winners getting the chance to perform at this premier event. The whole school and dozens of people who live in the nearby community pile into the gymnasium to watch and shriek at the performers like teenage girls at Shea Stadium watching the Beatles in the 60s. Rather than wave lighters in the air, each student will turn on the flashlight of his or her cell phone and rock side to side in tune with particularly charismatic performers. Performances range from hip-hop dancing, to singing to kung fu displays. There was even a nice alumni song where recent graduates came on stage and paid tribute to their alma mater. That went much smoother than the other alumni act in which the Beijing and Shanghai alums tried Skyping in to say hi, which went about as well as you’d expect a videoconference with an entire auditorium of people connecting through a slow Internet connection to go. All in all, it was a good night for my co-teacher Will and I to sit with some of our students and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
- Students waving their cell phone “lighters”
- Performers on stage after the show
The next day I was given an adorable handwritten note inviting the foreign teachers to attend an in-class New Year’s party that afternoon. Will was already on his way to Hong Kong, so I went solo to attend Class 2’s holiday extravaganza. The students had rearranged the desks into a U-shape to make a performance space, because apparently the word “party” is synonymous with “show” in China. I was thoroughly enjoying myself as I sat at the back of the classroom and watched even more amateur breakdancing and karaoke songs by the students. Without warning, the student MC announced to the class, “And now teacher Ramie will come up and perform for us.” *Quick cut to my shocked face as the class erupts in applause*. I tried deflecting the offer but there was no way I could get out of that room without doing something in front of the class. For the millionth time in my life I wished I was musically gifted, but I chose instead to improvise a performance of teaching the class to say “Happy New Year” in a variety of languages. I went through English, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew, topping the whole speech off by speaking a lot of Chinese, which to most of the students who didn’t know I could speak any Chinese, must have been the real performance. I better practice how to play the guitar before the school’s spring “English Festival” performance is sprung on us!
- Class 2’s New Years party, on the TV screen the headmaster of the school gives a “Big Brother is watching you” kind of speech
- 3 out of the first 4 performances were hip hop dancing girls, I should have just done that for my performance
Happy New Year! 新年快乐！
*That’s all for the blog this week. You can always see more photos at my Flickr page below and send me an email at ramiejacobson@gmail.com or just leave a note in the comments section below*
The Wild Wild East 